Public Finance Magazine Cover

A blast from the not so distant past. I was given the a brief to create the phrase 'In The Pipeline' (the question mark was added later on) using about 5 stock images of pipes. Below you can see the trials and tribulations I went through trying to get the words to be legible and still all join together realistically.

The first attempt, took a lot longer than I expected and I hadn't accounted for perspective when I said yes to the deadline, even a single pipe with a different viewpoint to all the others would stand out and ruin the overall effect. I had to do endless amounts of cloning and jiggery pokery in Photoshop, the screw caps and joins were a godsend for hiding an perspective or pipe-join issues

Above you can see the second version which now has corrosion on the copper pipes and they have also been darkened in the hope of bringing the PVC pipes forward. It worked to an extent but the art director wanted another solution so...

...the copper pipes were removed and the white PVC was sprayed bright yellow. I also painted in a few cracks and leaks and changed the question mark period to a plughole.

Visit coverjunkie to see the final illustration on the cover.

This may not be my usual style but I enjoy trying something new especially when it's successful.

Stop... Experimentation Time Part 2

In a previous post I showed you a drawing of Sir Chris Hoy which I was hoping to develop into, what is for me, a different style of portrait illustration. I have now completed that little project so let me take you through it.

Above you can see my grey acrylic under-painting. Why grey? Well I've been struggling to create an even overall skin tone in watercolour so I decided that I should try an acrylic wash underneath to unify all the transparent colours glazed on top.

Watercolour is notoriously difficult when it comes to skin because it's too transparent, oils work well because they offer an opaque sheen. Above you can see the results of glazing with watercolour just before I moved into photoshop to tweak everything and add background detail.

Above is the final image, you can see I have adjusted the levels on Chris and added a London 2012 Olympic gold medal. I have also contended with the slight speckle in the background colour by reducing it's contrast. Hopefully all of these changes reinforce my overall value concept of middle tone/lightest/darkest. Below you can see a progression.

In conclusion (sorry if this sounds like an essay) I very happy with the results, especially in the subtle skin tones. Without a doubt I shall be using this technique more often. I also have a mind to add gouache in the hope of becoming more realistic. Some aspects that I was disappointed were the accuracy of the portrait and the slight speckle still prevalent in my watercolours. The speckle could be solved by changing paper or concentrating more on acrylics, as for the drawing its just more practice I need.