Harvard Magazine Illustrations
29/May/2009
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill
I was recently given a terrific assignment illustrating an upcoming article in Harvard Magazine. The article discussed how cross pollination of scientific disciplines was resulting in new historical discoveries. The job involved creating three pieces of art, two smaller explanatory illustrations, along with a larger painting that would run across the lower half of a two page spread. That painting, a snapshot of a Saxon dominated village, in post Roman Britain, is the one I’m posting here.
After doing some basic research and reviewing the materials provided by the client, I did a series of quick thumbnails. With a basic idea of where I wanted to go, I began sketching the village scene in Painter. I knew we would be suggesting a coastal location for the village, with a typically overcast sky. This gave me a great opportunity to highlight the characters with a nice cool rim light. I built up the sketch by first placing the main features that I knew needed to be shown, the thatched roof homes for example, and then added some villagers knowing that a beefy Saxon warrior type would become the main focus. This gave me ideas as to how I could play off light against dark and create a feeling of depth that made the viewer feel as if they could walk into the scene.
I’ve been told that doing a color sketch before working out a pencil is backward, but for the life of me I don’t know why. Exploring broad areas of value with an eye toward the overall color scheme makes perfect sense to me. Once I had a general idea of the feel I was after, I began to work out some details using the color sketch’s value suggestions.
This rough pencil was presented to the art director to clarify the direction I intended to take the art. Once given the green light, I worked up a tight version. That pencil was sent on for review by an expert who suggested changes to better reflect historical fact and a second tight pencil (below) was drawn up.
With the second pencil’s approval, I began to work in Painter, laying in color on the Canvas layer, the pencil floating on a “Multiply” layer above. When I had the basics in place the piece was imported into Photoshop where I dropped the pencil layer down and continued to refine and tighten the painting, occasionally rearranging or correcting as I went until finished. You can see I veered off from the initial color sketch’s dreary darkness. Although I really liked the sketch’s atmospheric feel, I felt it was just too dreary and dark and worked more color into the final painting.
Winston Churchill
I was recently given a terrific assignment illustrating an upcoming article in Harvard Magazine. The article discussed how cross pollination of scientific disciplines was resulting in new historical discoveries. The job involved creating three pieces of art, two smaller explanatory illustrations, along with a larger painting that would run across the lower half of a two page spread. That painting, a snapshot of a Saxon dominated village, in post Roman Britain, is the one I’m posting here.
After doing some basic research and reviewing the materials provided by the client, I did a series of quick thumbnails. With a basic idea of where I wanted to go, I began sketching the village scene in Painter. I knew we would be suggesting a coastal location for the village, with a typically overcast sky. This gave me a great opportunity to highlight the characters with a nice cool rim light. I built up the sketch by first placing the main features that I knew needed to be shown, the thatched roof homes for example, and then added some villagers knowing that a beefy Saxon warrior type would become the main focus. This gave me ideas as to how I could play off light against dark and create a feeling of depth that made the viewer feel as if they could walk into the scene.
I’ve been told that doing a color sketch before working out a pencil is backward, but for the life of me I don’t know why. Exploring broad areas of value with an eye toward the overall color scheme makes perfect sense to me. Once I had a general idea of the feel I was after, I began to work out some details using the color sketch’s value suggestions.
This rough pencil was presented to the art director to clarify the direction I intended to take the art. Once given the green light, I worked up a tight version. That pencil was sent on for review by an expert who suggested changes to better reflect historical fact and a second tight pencil (below) was drawn up.
With the second pencil’s approval, I began to work in Painter, laying in color on the Canvas layer, the pencil floating on a “Multiply” layer above. When I had the basics in place the piece was imported into Photoshop where I dropped the pencil layer down and continued to refine and tighten the painting, occasionally rearranging or correcting as I went until finished. You can see I veered off from the initial color sketch’s dreary darkness. Although I really liked the sketch’s atmospheric feel, I felt it was just too dreary and dark and worked more color into the final painting.