Whats on the box

When we read our imagination takes us further, it will fill in and create extra depth and meaning to the story we're reading.  An illustrators job is to visualise those imagining and deduce what might be going on in a scene or character interaction that isn't described in the authors words.

When creating illustrations for a story, I very much focus on the process of developing what my imagination is telling me to the page.   I'm always keen to make suggestions and develop ideas that can help enrich what the author has written. 

This scene was created to show how the children in the story bond with the robot, originally it was supposed to be a dinner table scene, though as robots don't eat it highlighted the difference of him as a character and separated him from the kids in the story.  Instead I fleshed out this scene with them all watching something scary, so that a bond is created by their share experience.  

This artwork was created by hand using pencils, scanned and layered and painted on Photoshop 

Follow the balloon, drawing is fun

Illustrating an artwork is fun and the enjoyment should reflect in what the final artwork looks like.  You can really get a sense of enjoyment in creating a scene, a snippet from life rendered on the page.  For this illustration I really enjoyed capturing in ink the types of character you might see in in a line up, different ages, clothing styles and mood. 

As you can see I like economy in the line, keeping it simple and bold and easy to read. This was for a double page editorial illustration with text to be added on top. It also came with a background variartion showing the scene in context at an airport. 

High Seas Adventure

Illustrating a children's story is a joy and a learning experience for me, the process of developing the visuals from character, concept layout to finished artwork creates opportunities to develop my existing techniques or learn new ones.  This process I hope ultimately rewards the reader and fully realises the author, publishers and my own vision.  

I think its very important not to get to caught up in my own style and allow flexibility in my approach as openness and the wiliness to try new ideas can also refresh what you can do as an artist. 

Below is a little example, this illustration was created to primary focus on the characters on board the pirate ship, giving space to each personality.  The children's book artwork was rendered in pencil, I played around with layers adding paper textures to give a watercolour style texture to the colour. 

  Please get in touch if you have any questions or would like to be sent samples. 

Drawing On Glass

Normally I hit the drawing board when doing an illustration, using paper, whatever weight or type that suits what I’m using to make a mark on it. 

Drawing on a window is a little bit more tricky and to get it right I plan out first what I’m going to draw on it.  Starting like I would in any commission I sketch my ideas down and create a layout on paper so I’ve got a good guide before I illustrate on the window.

Getting started on Café Calluna’s windows for The Enchanted Forest.

Normally when you stare down a page to begin an artwork all you get is that big white surface filling your view and challenging you to make your first mark.  With a window you struggle with the view ahead, people passing, reluctantly featuring in someone’s selfie with you drawing in it, incidents of road rage and an endless procession of delivery vans. Life passes by and occasionally interacts if you stir a person’s curiosity.  My work for me is normally in a comfort zone and a place where you don’t get that kind of distraction but its so much fun to get out there.  That’s why opportunities to draw in public with window illustrations or chalk art and even live drawing are so great to do.  A chance for real time feedback, sharing my skills and observations. 

Give me some chalk pens and a window to draw on.

Any live drawing event whether it’s in a meeting room fleshing out an idea on paper with a client or in a conference hall recording an event with illustration is a great opportunity for an artist to stimulate and push their skills and share with others.  Making creativity a shared and more interactive experience is a wonderful thing to be part of.  

WIndow at night.

A Tricky Scene

Imagine a robbery at a newsagents and all manner of scary thoughts cross your mind, the potential for someone to get hurt, weapons, dangerous assailants and theft.  When illustrating a scene like that in a children’s book you have to step carefully.   Even when the tone of the book is funny you have to consider making the scene look dangerous and dramatic without having the illustration look too violent or scary.  At the same time you have to give the artwork a little edge as to not belittle how terrifying a robbery can be.  Performing a illustrated balancing act worthy of a trapeze artist starts with laying out the essential elements from the story and composing a layout. 

Creating a good concept illustration is key to developing the right tone and I’ll do that by taking a very rough sketch and using layout paper just go over it again until I get character, composition and tone the way I want it.   Getting it right at this stage means no later disappointment from the publisher by keeping the intention of the approved signed off concept in line with how the finished image will look like.

My Pen and Ink illustration for the Halloween Bandits

For my robbery scene, illustrated in pen and ink, I added in a few bystanders, a man protecting his dog, and a boy next to a jar of lollipops.  It really helps of course that my robbers were wearing Halloween masks and that alone helps keep the look fun, dramatic and not too scary. 

Illustration Friday

The theme to this week's artwork on Illustration Friday's weekly competition is vintage and my illustration submission is a baseball player done of course to look a bit vintage complete with a big old fashioned tash.  Pen & ink illustration rendered by hand and then layered up and colour added on Photoshop to give it a nice grainy look.  I wanted to get a nice bit of movement and perspective in the run up and throw in my character design.

Halloween Bandits

Cover illustrations can range from the complex, lots of characters and things going on in a active environment to the simple, an object or person.  The focus when illustrating the cover for Halloween Bandits was to capture some of the quirkiness of character in a dynamic action piece.  After creating the character concept illustrations the key to creating a really punchy image that would leap of the cover was to visualize the energy and movement by varying thickness of the line in ink loosely and quick by hand.

All my commissions are hand drawn illustrations I prefer the spontaneity of a hand rendered artwork, quirks and splatters of ink can add a lot of expression to an illustration.   Pen and ink illustrations when got down on paper quickly can look very bold using different techniques and pens and brushes.

The Halloween Bandits Cover illustration.  Hand drawn illustration in pen and ink.

For more samples including picture book illustrations, narrative and comic illustration or reluctant reader story artwork, please visit my illustration portfolio.

Illustrations are divided into three galleries.

Editorial illustration and advertising artwork.

Picture book illustrations.

Illustrated books which features illustrations for comic and older/reluctant reader illustration samples.

Under the sea, Cover Artwork For the Little Mermaid Adventures

Creating a visually dynamic illustration for a front cover is always the result you want to achieve when starting the project.  For Twisty Tales, The Little Mermaid Adventures commissioned by Franklin Watts the challenge was creating a cover image before the work had started on the book interior illustrations. 

Through the process of roughing out the concepts for the interior you take your characters designs and get to know them better in the actions they take throughout the story.  The character design changes and adapts to the highs and lows of the adventure.  Little tweaks to the look can help express emotions better and it all helps with the narrative.  Doing the character design illustrations first for the book cover is not unusual as long as you know the story and the adventure the characters must face.

I develop my sketches in pencil and hand them over for review, keeping a good line of dialog going with the client and adapting the concept illustrations to fit with the feedback.  Ensuring a quick pace at this stage keeps helps the development and the input fresh so that the character doesn’t get overworked.  

Concept illustrations for the little mermaid.

Using the layout provided by the publisher I create the composition for the cover.  The little mermaid shoots through the artwork towards the sailor she is going to rescue.  It’s all very dynamic and has a comic book illustration tone to the layout as its very much a action scene with drama and danger that needs to be conveyed. 

There is no doubt from the layout that the man needs rescuing from drowning but an extra danger from a looming shark also needed to be shown.  Judging how prominent the shark should be was the main item to work out on the layout as the overall composition of the mermaid racing to help the sailor in the bottom corner was very well received.

Book cover illustrations showing the development of the composition.

When it came to finishing the illustration and adding colour I wanted a little bit of the beauty of the underwater world to show, I thought of showing the plankton floating about like stars in a night sky with rays of light from the surface softly lighting the depths below.  With the little room I had left I wanted to show the little mermaids entourage of fish looking concerned at their brethren's plight in the net. 

Finished Book cover illustration

Cover Illustration with design.

For other Picture Book illustrations, Illustrated stories and narrative illustrations please visit my galleries.  I have also reluctant reader illustrations and comic strip illustrations available to view or request samples of via my contact page.

WOOF!

Illustration Friday this week is all about the nose so to sniff around for a little exposure and have some fun I’ve submitted this fellow, my Basset Hound illustration.  Having a little play with perspective to show the head a little closer and focus on the expression gives shows this pooch’s personality more and makes the illustration quirky. 

As a freelance illustrator I’m commission to draw a wide variety of places, people and animals and my work includes advertising illustrations, editorial illustrations, educational illustrations, narrative artwork for children’s books and picture book illustrations.  Having quick visualization skills I’m also asked to illustrate storyboards and commissioned to illustrate character designs and pitch artworks.

Pencil illustration, coloured up and layered on PhotoShop

Hopefully I’m not barking up the wrong tree to say that you’ll find my dog illustration as lovable as I do. Waggy tails all round.

To submit an artwork please go to Illustration Friday

Going Local

Promoting your small business especially when it’s brand new and you’re finding your feet is an exciting time and the passion really shines through when I’m talking to the client.  I’m very happy to discuss and listen to their ideas and make suggestions working off their energy and helping make their business more visible.

It was a real pleasure to work direct with the owners of Donaghy and Sanderson, a local wine merchant and deli. While their business was being fitted out I was commissioned to create a shop front illustration. Having past experience of designing retail and licensed premises, it was simple to work off the floor plans and imagine the space as it would look when finished.   

This illustration’s main purpose was for the license application and other promotions, so it was important to have the shop buzzing with activity and people going to and fro.  I created the finished pen and ink illustration from the concept I developed and emailed over for approval.  The line art illustration was kept a little tighter and for license use and using layers to create a more busy image with people and the shop’s produce so that they could be added in for the promotional illustration. 

Creating a layered illustration so that you can adapt it for a client’s future needs is really important.  To be able to quickly edit it keeps costs down for small and independent businesses.   The same can be said of my branded illustration work for similar or large companies. 

Exterior retail illustration for Donaghy & Sanderson for promotional use.  The style is very similar to editorial illustrations I’ve done in the past for restaurant reviews.

Illustrating a Book Round Up

Illustrating a Book Round Up.

It’s really all about communicating ideas from the moment you start the project, listening to the editor or author discussing their ideas and sharing your own thoughts and taking lead from the story.  The illustration is the end result of that communication; an amalgamation of thought, insight into the story and your own personality that will infer extra detail and nuances that lie between the lines of text. 

An illustrator uses their artistic skill to give those discussions form, through a process of character design illustrations, developing and enhancing the narrative in concept artworks and with feedback refining the artwork further until the illustrations are finished for publication. 

Confidence in your skills and the willingness to push yourself with new techniques or varying or adapting your style that can help communicate the story best will always keep your creative energy flowing keeping the process fresh, fun and show you and your illustrations at their best. There should never be a workman like approach to illustrating a children’s book. Use that opportunity of collaboration to create something you can be proud of putting on your bookshelf.

The quality of the finished book can be determined on how good an illustrator is in storytelling and a good narrative illustrator can enhance the tale that the author has skilfully told into a complete package for the reader to enjoy. 

Pen and ink illustration from The White Arrow Assassin

Illustrating a Book Pt4 Working on the cover

Illustrating the cover shouldn’t be any different from drawing the artwork for the interior but is in many ways.  Firstly it’s an important factor in selling the book and has to represent what the story is about inone image, it has to illustrate the tone of the book whether its humorous, dramatic or an adventure story.  It needs to convey the genre maybe in an overt way or more subtlety, an example is a fantasy story with magic, monsters and strange lands that needs to be communicated on the cover to the potential reader.

Ways of illustrating this could be to show full on these fantasy elements with more recognisable details becoming secondary.  Another approach would be to ground the story showing the more approachable characters more prominently and the fantasy as a backdrop. As an artist there is maybe no right or wrong direction and it is more about responding to the story as a reader and interpreting it as a creative in the way you believe most fits the story.  As a freelance illustrator commissioned by an editor or author to create an artwork for the cover it’s a different matter as you will receive a brief or outline for you to interpret. The scope of what you can create will vary from project to project.  A tight brief is not a constraint to your imagination rather an opportunity, a creative response can be just as effective while working within set boundaries.

Cover Illustration rough and finished artwork for dropping into design.  Pen and ink using art pens,  dip pen and brush.  Illustration coloured on PhotoShop.

The book cover illustration for The White Arrow Assassin by Tim Flanagan was a rather simple brief to show the main character Private Investigator Lawrence Pinkley.  The character illustration was to be set on a coloured background with title and not include location or any scene from the book.  Visually there are a few ways that you can sell what he does on the front cover in a quick and effective way.  If you were to do word association with the description of detective a number of stereotypical answers about look and props would come your direction.  Using iconic imagery was key to sell the idea to audiences quickly.  As Pinkley’s look is typical of old gum shoe and noir detectives and his age is set down in the story, the boundaries are there to work within and the key challenge is representing by understanding his character in a quirky way.   He’s still new to the profession and out of his depth the humour in the story comes from his not understanding and inferring incorrectly from clues, resulting in the wrong deduction.  So when creating his character, a little bit of awkwardness in his physicality and stance goes some way in conveying this in the illustration.

Illustrating a Book Pt3 Working on Interior Illustrations

Hand drawn illustrations for the book are created on that old reliable medium of paper.  By using layout paper for the roughs and developing revised drafts over the top you create layers or a history of development of that particular illustration.  When doing the final illustrations in pen and ink I use better quality paper or board, scanning the artwork in then return to using layers in PhotoShop. Again it’s a process of building up the art, beginning with the pen and ink illustration and adding on top or below a new layer that adds to the picture.

Using layers this way gives so much control and the possibility of enhancing the illustration.  The style of the artwork will inform the kind of treatment you give to your layers. Scanning in textures or washes and making the layer setting overlay can give the effect of a hand rendered wash when using software and another layer to colour the illustration.

The White Arrow Assassin by Tim Flanagan. Left to right: Pen and ink illustration on a layer, Next shows simple shading on a separate normal setting, Last is the texture this is an ink wash on good paper scanned in and set on an overlay layer on top of the shading layer.

Depending on the project this process can involve a few layers to achieve a simple hand rendered look of a line and wash illustration. More complicated illustrations can have many more, the line art can be on several layers and composited together from a foreground to background object or character. Colour added to each layer on a separate layer the line art on a multiplying layer setting so that the colour can be seen below. Textures and lighting added each to different layers to achieve depth, atmosphere and enhance any action in the scene.

It can sound complicated and I hope I did not make it sound like goobledygook! Practice and experience in pushing your skills and solving problems on the way will gives you the skills in confidently creating a layered illustration.

As a freelance illustrator with experience in creating book cover artwork, children’s book and picture book illustrations I create each artwork with the brief, story and finished product in mind.  I’ve built up confidence in using layers to create the illustration, my top tip is to keep a master copy with layers to be able to edit or grab elements or characters to use elsewhere in the book.  The back cover springs to mind as a place wherea ‘drop in’ works well as it always needs a little illustration to sit with the blurb.  Building up the artwork in this way, having the experience in understanding how a book is promoted, the print process and digital release makes you a more valuable resource to the publisher/author. Having their confidence in your skills and professionalism as an illustrator will create further opportunity to collaborate with them again. 

Illustration Friday

Illustration Friday http://illustrationfriday.com/ run a fun weekly challenge to create or submit an illustration based on a weekly subject. The topic ranges widely and its fun to come up with an illustration and get it out there. I'll post my weekly entry on this site and drop by to have a look to see what I've come up with. 

This week's topic is Tattoos.  This is my pen and ink illustration done quickly in felt pen with some bright colours added on PhotoShop, use your shades when viewing! 

Illustrating a Book pt2 Sketching up the interior

Coming up with the interior illustrations for children’s book is a creative process done in steps, after having got the characters sketched up and approved the next step is creating the scenes that sit alongside the words.

My task as a freelance illustrator is reading the story without pictures with creating the visual narrative in mind.  Reading will naturally fire the imagination and your mind will conjure up images from the descriptions in the story, creatively filling in the picture and the details that lie between the lines.

As I read I will take down notes and sketch I work fast, places and people spill onto a page, drawing concept illustrations, taking bits of layout paper and creating revised drafts on top.  A better idea might come along later and I’ll refine and develop the pencil illustration further till I get something I can show the editor. I’ll finish off my first draft illustrations in pen and ink and email all the interior layouts for feedback.

Below I’ve shown my concept illustration for The White Arrow Assassin by Tim Flanagan that establishes the location of where the story is set.

Pen and ink artwork for my Whitby town scene concept.

Finished artwork for The White Arrow Assassin comparing the final art and concept shows changes and refinement of my original idea.  Pen and ink illustration with wash.

Creating children’s book illustrations has to be done with an open mind and a willingness to change ideas and take on-board suggestions.  Feedback is really helpful and as a freelance illustrator good communication with the author/editor really helps.  Receiving feedback isn’t always easy but it is essential if you want to get the most from the creative process, it brings out the best in my skills as an artist in order to create the best illustrations possible for the book.

Illustrating a Book pt1 Character Design.

I doodle when I’m talking to an editor or author about their thoughts for the book I’m about to work on.  Don’t worry I multi task, doodling is my form of note taking and I’ll sketch down ideas whilst I chat to get a feel for the world that’s about to be created.

When I get down to starting the project, reading and understanding what the story is about is key to doing the illustrations.   Taking note of the important details is the first step in creating the illustrations.  Understanding the inferences made allows me to expand on the precise words laid down in the story and gives me a range of other things I can illustrate into the scenes and characters to create a place.  Going through this detailed first read helps me create narrative illustrations that will draw the reader’s focus.

I’ll come up with the character design illustrations first, either little pencil sketches that I develop sometimes over several drafts, or quick designs I can capture straight away. At this stage the visual tone of the book is being developed via the character illustrations.  My conceptual artworks are emailed to the editor/author for feedback and comments.

Pen and ink illustrations for Lawrence Pinkley character development.

The main protagonist is usually the entry point for the reader, a character the audience can immediately identify with and start to get to know.  While you want the audience to identify strongly with this character the illustration doesn’t have to be of a ‘conventional hero’  even if the book is about a multi legged monster there has to be something that humanizes the design in some way that lets you feel for them.

In The White Arrow Assassin by Tim Flanagan, Lawrence Pinkley a detective is the main guy in the story, he’s a lanky, slightly awkward looking teenage, who has not fully grown into his skin yet.  He often jumps to the wrong conclusions but is noble and wants to follow on from his father’s footsteps.  He’s the straight man unaware of the silly goings on around him. 

Creating the other characters such as Reverend Tansey, The White Arrow Assassins and others that inhabit Pinkley’s world.  More flamboyant and quirkier looking character types capturing the tone and highlighting the humor in the story.  

A finished version of Lawrence Pinkley from the book The White Arrow Assassin by Tim Flanagan.  Pen and ink illustration using dip pens and felts, painted on Photoshop.