Last week, I had the opportunity to illustrate the cover for SF Weekly, for a story about Nancy Pelosi. It’s almost a cliché these days for illustrators to publicly praise art directors on their blogs, but in this case, I really mean it: Art Director Andrew Nilsen was amazing to work with, and his excellent direction really made this cover all the better. If all my gigs went this smoothly, I would be a happy man indeed.

Working with an uncertain headline (due to last-minute attempts for the writer to wrangle an interview with Pelosi) meant that we had a strong chance of revisions or tweaks to the art, so digital paint was the way to go for this one. Done entirely in Photoshop CS4 using my well-worn Wacom Intuos 3 tablet. I’m doing enough digital painting these days that I’m getting sorely tempted to buy one of those new Cintiqs. Maybe someday…

Here’s a detail from my latest illustration for Stocks & Commodities Magazine. Thanks as always to AD Christine Morrison for the work!

The issue containing this illustration has now seen print, so I can now show it in its entirety, as well as show the process steps. Above is the final illustration as it saw print.

The article was simply about reversals in the NASDAQ market. With that basic concept in mind, I set about trying to figure out an effective way of showing it.

My initial thumbnail sketch. I was trying to show two businessmen trading money, each giving it away as they received it. I knew I would eventually come up with a better composition for this, but this at least established the concept that the AD chose.

A detail from my photo reference. I was the model for everything in the illustration, with my ever-patient wife assisting me with the photography.

The final tight sketch. Since the deadline was very tight at this point, I decided this would be another one to attempt to paint digitally.

My next step was to set the sketch layer to Multiply, which renders the whites transparent, and paint in flats using a hard-edged brush on a layer below. Once my basic values and colors were decided upon, then I could go in and begin to render.

At this stage, the figure has been rendered using Photoshop’s charcoal brush, and rays have been added on a layer underneath, with a radial layer mask added to make the rays gradually fade out.

While I felt reasonably good that the figure didn’t look expressly “digital,” the background most definitely did and needed some texture to humanize it. I dropped in a scan of old textured cardboard, desaturated it to convert it to gray tones, and then set it to Soft Light at 62% opacity. I then added some shadow gradients in the four corners. Once this was done, it was a matter of dropping in the arrow graphic (meant to reinforce the idea of the flow of money coming in and going out that is referenced in the article), and a little glazing on the flesh tones to warm them up just a bit. The file was created at 400 dpi so I have the flexibility to print it larger if needed.

And the very last step is seeing it in print! I’ve been pleased to find that my digitally-painted pieces are reproducing fairly accurately in terms of color, definitely closer then when I send scans of traditionally-painted work.

A sneak peek of a detail of an illustration finished this week for my favorite Scottish art director, Christine Morrison over at Stocks & Commodities Magazine. I’ll post the full illustration and process story once the issue sees print. And yes, I served as my own model for this one.

Okay, so it wasn’t really right out in front like that, I staged it for the photo. It was tucked in the upper right corner with all the other finance magazines. But still, it was there! I remember Greg Spalenka telling me back when I was a student that for an illustrator, the finished piece isn’t the completed painting, but rather the actual published version of the job.

I’ve been experimenting with digital painting for a while now, but this was my first published job that was painted digitally, using Corel Painter and Photoshop. It’s a technique I’ll keep in mind as a viable option for quick turnaround deadlines like this one, and seeing it in print reminded me of a few things I need to remember for the future: it’s so easy to get soft edges using Painter that I need to crisp up a few edges to make sure the whole image isn’t too diffuse, and I also need to watch out that my values don’t get too dark, because what looks vivid on an LCD monitor is going to dull down quite a bit with the dot gain that happens with offset printing. All that said, I was fairly pleased with how it turned out, and the nice thing about working digitally is that you don’t have to worry about any color distortions being introduced during scanning, as so often happens with my traditionally-painted illustrations. Overall, this was probably about the most accurate reproduction I’ve seen yet for my work.

Can’t show the full illustration since it won’t print for another two months, but here’s a detail of a job I turned around on a tight deadline last week for Christine Morrison over at Stocks and Commodities Magazine. Always a pleasure to work with Christine. Since the deadline for this one was unusually short, there wasn’t going to be enough time for me to paint it traditionally and get it photographed, so I opted to paint this one digitally using Corel Painter. I still have a ways to go with learning how to digitally paint, but this one felt like a step in a positive direction.