The above image is a Painter 12 pen-and-ink redo of an illustration I have done two versions of before. I think it fits this week's Illustration Friday topic well.
The previous incarnations were to be sample cover designs for the portfolio, however, neither is up to that standard. The scene is based on image I have in my head for an early middle grade work in progress. (This particular scene, which would occur near the end, has yet to be written.) As you can see, I was exploring (somewhat clumsily) with different media:
I did this first, rather heavy-handed, job using pen-and-ink, watercolor, and colored pencil on Arches hot press paper. I (inexpertly) touched up the image in Photoshop, then did the (very amateurish) layout also in Photoshop.
I have gotten bit better with Photoshop since then. I think that shows a little better in my next stab at the cover:
Here I was going for a scratchboard effect. I did a pencil sketch, scanned it in, then inverted the black and white. I used the eraser tool to scrape away the black, then added the color to a background layer. I like the boldness of this style, but the characters need more expressiveness. The layout is still limited by my inexperience with certain features in Photoshop. I am hard at work on my InDesign skills, however, so that should be moot point soon.
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