HVH2O: Costume Paddle

I was asked to create an illustration for a poster advertising HVH2O's Costume Paddle event. Entrants were encouraged to come in costume and/or decorate their paddle boards, kayaks and canoes. I had a lot of fun doing this, especially the visual research into other such events. Much to amusement, I saw that people really did paddle in their T-Rex costumes, so of course I had to add one to my illustration. 

Below is the final design of the poster.

ARTIST'S CHALLENGE: DAY 3

Today's group of images are full length images of women in various modes of dress, done in various types of media. 

This woman with a crazy hairstyle on a terrace on some other planet in a galaxy far away was done in pen and ink and watercolor. It was based on a doodle I had made while trying not to be bored to death at a weekly production meeting at a book publisher I had been working for at the time. It was around the time Episode 1 of Star Wars had been in the theaters and I was really inspired by the costumes and the hair. That was probably the best thing about that movie, as for the rest of the movie, meh.






































This pirate is done entirely digitally using Adobe Illustrator, which really was a challenge since it doesn't really involve drawing as I normally think of it. I started with a pencil sketch but then creating the rest with vector based shapes was really challenging.  This had been done as an illustration for the Illustration Friday concept "Surrender" and I had posted it to this blogs back when I first created it.

This girl on the dark background is done in acrylic pain on wood and that was partially inspired by an early American portrait I had seen at the Clark Institute which I redid with some Goreyesque overtones. I call it "Ghost Girl."

PLAY POSTER: A Crown of Ivy

It's that time of year again where I design a poster for my husband's student's play performance. Usually, I am given a photo of some of the cast to use on the poster, but this time, the photographer wasn't available. So I had the option of illustrating the poster. It could've been an all type poster but the subject matter of the play (which my husband wrote especially for his 6th grade students) screamed for a more Victorian look. I only had the weekend in which to do it and it's been ages since I've drawn in this way, so I was a little nervous. So I spread some books with art by Arthur Rackham, Tony diTerlizzi and Brian and Wendy Froud on the table for inspiration and got to work. I didn't include a background to keep it simple (and also because I just didn't have the time.) The boy and the fairy are pencil drawings that I scanned, the color was done in Photoshop and the background is a pattern that I keep around for projects like this.

Here's the pencil drawing:

Illustration Friday: SWEATER

 

After staring at the computer too much doing design work and my Valentine Kitties illustration, I decided to just color my sketch in with colored pencils. This little girl is my favorite. Below she's shown with the rest of her friends, all modeling sweaters that don't really exist outside of my imagination. If I had tons of time and yarn, I probably could knit these things. I don't think any cat would really be into wearing any sweater but it's fun to imagine it.

Illustration Friday: SURRENDER

Initially, I didn't know what I was going to do so I just starting drawing a face in my sketchbook and this is what I came up with. I don't know who this young woman is surrendering to or why. She seems non-chalant about it so I think she may still have another pistol or a dirk hidden in her boot.