Thursday, November 17, 2011

Snowy Monarchs




This one is an early house warming present for my parents who are currently building their own eco-friendly house (check out the blog here: http://sumacgrove.blogspot.com/). My mom requested a paper illustration of a national park, and since Sequioa is one of my favorites and I have very happy memories with my family there, I chose to do one of these amazing monarchs.

Sequoia Process

This time when starting a new paper illustration of Sequoia National Park, I needed to do a more thorough planning process. After measuring the frame and box, I built my composition in Photoshop to scale, creating the different layers I intended to make.


Once I was happy with the colors and composition, I lowered the fill on each layer to 0% and gave it a 3 pixel stroke, creating an outline. I printed the outlines to scale and used it as the templates for the cut-outs.


After cutting out the elements for the back layer, I placed tracing paper over it to create the dense atmosphere you often see in flurries and snow storms. Unfortunately, the only tracing paper I could find that had the right thickness was too short for my composition. So I cut the paper to correspond with the trees. A little bit of paint for the snow rounded out this layer.


The next layer is the middle ground. A little more detail goes into this one, particularly the bark on the monarch Sequoia to the right. To keep this layer at the correct height, I cut small squares of balsa wood for supports and fit them within the frame.


Another layer of tracing paper went over the middle layer (this time, using olive oil to make the bottom portion more transparent, giving a slight illusion of a gradient). I wasn't able to resolve the issue of merging the two tracing papers together, so I had to create tension on the paper to keep them lined up well. Next went the final layer, another monarch sequoia and the matte board. More snowflakes (painted and paper) were added last.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Shadow Play in process

I started with the characters and their clothing

I started adding different layers to create the depth.

More drapery and plants added to the depth, but it was still missing something to tie it all together. In the final version, I added one more plant and some ropes from the ceiling.