What is that illustration supposed to be?
My illustrations are generally abstract – they are whatever you see in them.
They all look kinda sexual.
I blame a heavy early exposure to Georgia O’Keefe. And, I’m just kinda bent like that.
The titles don’t make any sense!
I’m not so good at naming artwork. I usually go with the first thing that pops into my head when I sit back and look at the finished piece. Sometimes this results in word salad (illustrations) or obscure references (landscapes). Really, titling is not my strength.
What tools do you use?
In no particular order:
- Pen, pencil, and a Strathmore sketchbook. (The basics.)
- HP Scanjet G3010 (Not the best thing out there, but adequate.)
- Wacom Intuos3 tablet (Without which I could. not. function.)
- Photoshop CS5
- Illustrator CS4
- Painter X
- Painter Essentials 3 (No this isn’t needless duplication -the two programs are different enough that sometimes this is the better tool for a specific job. And don’t get me started about Essentials 4 – it’s a cartooney piece of shit.)
- GE X5 camera
- Viveza plugin for Photoshop
- FastStone image viewer (For asset management. I refuse to use Bridge on the grounds that I hate it like burning, and Lightroom is like using a semi to swat a fly.)
- HP desktop computer (for home), refurbished Gateway laptop (when working elsewhere).
What medium do you work in?
My work is a combination of photo-manipulation, digital painting, and traditional illustration.
How do you do that?
For the flowers, landscapes, and portraits,and I start with a photograph. I work from a combination of stock photos (portraits) or supplied shots (for commissions) and shots I’ve taken over the years. (I’m a crap photographer. It’s why I taught myself photo-manipulation in the first place.)
I edit the base photo for color and composition in Photoshop, then go to Painter for the painting. Usually I go back and forth between Painter and Photoshop during the painting process, as both programs do different things well. Once the “painting” process is finished, I usually go back to Photoshop and add texture effects to spice things up. (I’m an obsessive texture collector) Illustrative elements may be added in at this point also.
The abstract illustrations are a simpler process. The base line art is hand drawn and scanned into Photoshop, where it gets cleaned up and assembled into a finished layout. (I used to do this by hand with pens and tracing paper. It. took. forever.) At this point the blackwork is done and often looks quite fine on it’s own, but I’m a sucker for color. Most of the coloring is done in Painter, with textures added afterwords in Photoshop.