Now that the Rhyme Rag is with the printers, I am going to show you through the process of creating one of the images.
At first I would scribble lots of ideas on paper, a bit like doing a brainstorming. Once I am happy with some of them, I start developing some aspects of them… As the image grows clearer in my head, I am ready to start drawing.
That’s when I start, very loosely, working of the composition of the image, making sure all the elements of the final illustration are there.
When I am happy with it, I use a tracing paper to draw over it and start adding detail. In most of the cases, all the detail of the illustration is here. I try to make sure that values are also explain at this stage.
Once the pencils on the tracing paper are finished it’s time to start inking. This time I used both a brush and a dip pen.
The ink drawing is finished. It only contain the outlines of the shapes which will be filled with the relevant colour in the next stages.
It is time to scan the drawing now. I load it into a channel and invert it. That way I can easily use it as a stencil.
Inmediately afterwards I start painting each one of the two colour plates directly in photoshop. That way I add the tone I had plan and create the space between foreground and background. This is the red plate…
..and this is the blue plate.
I mix the colours in my head as I paint… with a lot of help from photoshop were you can be previewing the changes to the comosite file as you go along.
And this is the way they will look once the image is printed
Hope you enjoyed it.
