My Illustration Book: Step one (Deciding what the theme is)

I have been thinking about different themes I could use for my book and I have decided to use a theme of 'Spirit Animals'. I want to create pieces of artwork showing people and their spirit animals in an expressive way that connect that person to that animal, showing their personalities and traits.
I am going to base each piece on someone I know, I am selecting close friends and family to use in these pieces.
My next steps are going to be sketching up first designs for my pieces, I will also be playing with different composition of the characters and their spirit animals.

Jessica Fortner

Jessica Fortner

Jessica Fortner is another artist that I have found that relates to my newest project, she creates interesting and intricate pieces based on animals. 

Jessica's work is very brightly coloured and intricate

This piece is so full of detail that it pulls you in to pick out different elements of the piece and decipher what piece is what.  

Miss Van

Miss Van

Miss Van is a brilliant illustrator who creates interesting pieces basing her work on women and animals. 

As I am going to base my illustration book on people and their power animals I decided to look at artists who combine people and animals to get some ideas of how I can create my pieces. 

This piece by Miss Van is very soft and feminin. She cas used soft pastel colours in the piece but kept the piece mostly greyscale and pale. This attracts the attention to the face, in the face she has made a rabbit mask and kept a feminin and human look to it. 

Here she has created another soft piece in greyscale using pencil, here you see a girl posed with a ostrich with ostrich feathers in her hat, relating the animal more to herself. I like this idea of keeping the animal and character separate but relating them with some elements.

An amazing and colourful piece of dancing girls with their animal themed masks. I love the soft and flowing atmosphere that is created with the colours and movement. 

Jame Jean

James Jean

Jame Jean is an amazing illustration, his creations are dark and detailed. His work relates very well to my current project so I decided to look further in to his work...

This piece by James Jean is so full of different characters and elements that it immediately creates a rich atmosphere, forcing you to look closer and try to pick out different pieces of the complete work. He has kept his work in greyscale, adding and element of simplicity to the complicated piece.

This piece by James Jean is much simpler that the previous piece, he has created a soft piece that is still interesting and draws you in. James has also kept this piece greyscale excluding the hare's red eye, this red eye creates a centre of colour to the piece pulling the eye towards it. 

James Jean's work relates very closely to my brief as he also makes books of his illustrations.
http://www.jamesjean.com/bound/
Above is a link to his website where you will find a range of his illustration books.

Artist research: Vania Zouravliov

 Vania Zouravliov

Vania is an amazing artist I have found, he creates beautiful and detailed pieces with a sinister and creepy feel pulling in he attention of the audience, here are a few of his pieces I have been looking at. 

This piece by Vania is very interesting and detailed, all in greyscale tones with a base of a pale green.  This piece contains so much detail that it forces the audience to look closer and take in all aspects of the piece. 

I love this piece, it is very dark and so sinister it pulls in the audience. The greyscale tones compliment the creepy atmosphere. 

Illustration book research: Phil Wilkinson

Phil Wilkinson

Phil Wilkinson is an amazing tattoo artist who also makes one off tattoo illustration books filled with his art work. Here is volume 1.. 

Here is a preview of his book found on his official Facebook page. His work here is very soft and detailed,  Phil has  chosen to use mostly greyscale tones and small highlights of colours. I love the effect this gives as it adds an interesting effect, pulling the eye around the piece and towards the colour.

I love this book of Phil's collection of work, as I am working towards creating my own I am going to look further in to it and look at other artists who have done their own illustrations collected in to a book. Phil Wilkinson is also creating a Volume 2 to this book, I suggest you check it out.

New brief!

In my new brief I have been asked to create a book using skills that I have learned and inspired by topics I have previously completed in this course.
To complete this brief I must first research artists within the sectors that I wish to progress to and see what they have done with their work, and also to research other artists who have created their own books of illustrations or books they worked with to illustrate.
I will also need to decide what sort of techniques I would like to use, at this moment I think I will work with a variety of all the past techniques I have used like print making, screen printing, digital and traditional techniques, in this process I will also be testing further with these techniques and see what I like or dislike and work towards a conclusion.

Digital piece process (Madness character)

Original sketch of my madness character. 

Scanned in image

Playing around with colour levels

Finished levels and opacity levels bought down

Line added

Base colours using soft pencil tools

More colour added, slowly building it up

Finished face colours and tones 

Start of eye colours

More tone added 

Whites of eyes added. I added more yellows for a sinister feel. 

Yellow veins added in left eye

Finished right eye 

I chose blue for the lips for a dead and cold effect

Inside of mouth adding depth

Base colour for teeth 

Teeth tone 

More teeth and mouth tone 

Finished mouth tone and colour

Adding a warping effect background to reflect the madness concept. 

Finished piece!!

Greg Capullo

Greg Capullo 

Greg Capullo is an amazing comic book artist who uses some digital media.

Cover for Batman: Court of Owls Volume 1 

Greg's work is very detailed and dark and filled with detail adding to the intricate sinister details.

Ryan Church

Ryan Church (www.ryanchurch.com) is one of the most famous digital artists today, he has worked on some of the most famous movie title such as:

• Star Trek & Star Trek: In to Darkness
• Zero Dark Thirty
• John Carter
• Super 8
• Real Steel
• Tron
• Transformers 1,2&3
• Falling Skies
• Avatar
• Dead Space
• Unannounced
• Star Wars 2&3

Ryan is a very successful artist and his work is extremely detailed and very high quality containing small details.  

The Digital Artist Survival Guide. (Digital research)

Here is a magazine I bought to help me with my digital artist research. It helped me out a lot as it is filled with everything I could possibly need to start with. The Digital Artists Survival Guide is filled with helpful tips and lessons to help create good effects with work and also shows you how to use some basic components of digital programmes such as grids, rulers and brushes. 

Here is an example of one of the pages that shows us some basic skills to use with Photoshop, I took a lot away from reading this and created some of my own brushes using this magazine. 

Below: Some examples of pages that show us artists tips and tricks that they use with digital programmes. These articles are small and easy to read and digest information. I have picked up a lot of skills by reading this and find this magazine very helpful. 

Each piece is by an established digital artist so all the information is trust worthy and shown to use in a clear set out way that shows us the full effects of using these techniques and process's. 

Turine Tran (Digital art)

Turine Tran
Turine Tran is a very interesting artist who creates cute and attention grabbing pieces, she uses hand drawn pieces and edits them in photoshop creating very detailed and glowing pieces. 

Here Turine has created a cute children's illustration keeping bright colours in the center of the piece which attracts attention in and the outer part of the piece bares resemblance to old paper.  

In this piece Turine has used pale and soft colours for the most and bright yellows around the bugs to make them appear as they are glowing, this creates a wonderful and magical effect which draws the audience in. 

Jessine Hein (Digital artist)

Jessine Hein

Jessine Hein is a digital artist I have found that I am interested in, Jessine uses both traditional and digital medias to create her work. 

This piece is very interesting, she has used pale, almost greyscale colour palette and kept the girl in the picture the main focus by keeping the background a pale and plain grey colour. The girl is quite simple but she has used tones and highlights to create depth and interest.

This piece is very interesting, it appears to be created with traditional medias and edited using digital programmes. Once again she has kept to a pale colour palette and added dark shadows around the eyes and mouth. 

This piece of Jessine's appears to be completely digitally created, she uses a pale colour selection again but in this piece she has used a lot of highlights keeping the piece interesting and attention grabbing.