Graphic arts: February 2007 Archives

I got some free time on my hands and decided to take a look back at art pieces I did at the paper from 2001. I started the end of January 2001.

Here are some of my first illustrations. Please refrain from laughing too loud...
I don't really remember what the story was about.

Teen stresses with school...

This day was pretty crazy in the newsroom. This was about the man with a machete, and how he had gone into a local school. This was a very, very long night for me...
Basically, I was drawing a schematic of the outside of the school building.

One of my favorites still... This was a cover illustration dealing with St. Patrick's Day. My inspiration came from an artist named Mucha. I love him.

I'll post more when I get some more free time...

See I knew I would come up with something different for my mentoring illustration.

Here's the idea. I decided to have an older more experience business person holding a watering can and he is watering another younger less experience business man.

Here's the sketch

I got this idea from how mentor's are there to help others grow in their jobs, as good employees, and as independent individuals.

You'll have to check out the York Daily Record/Sunday News Employment section this weekend to see which illustration I end up using.

Let's get right into it. Every week an illustration comes to either me or Tracey that goes into the employment section. This week's employment illustration is the importance of a mentor.

So what is a mentor? What's the purpose of the mentor? These are the questions I begin to ask myself to get the illustration rolling. My idea of a mentor was someone who is there to help encourage you, give you boost, help you out, and to ultimately get you in a better career position. So I came up with the idea of steps, because there are the various "steps" we all face in our jobs that get us to where we want to be. And along this journey a mentor can be a great help.

So I sketched out two subjects on steps. One is climbing the other is reaching out to help the one climbing.

Now since I'm in preliminary mode of my illustration. There is a good chance I could change mind about this whole idea. But for right now here's a look at my preliminary sketch.

Here is the final version of my Valentine's Day picture finder. You can also see it in today's paper.

When I'm designing a page alot of times I'll want to get in the zone, and I do that by plugging into my IPod and plugging out the world around.

Biggest inspiration at the moment is the song by Hellogoodbye-Here (In Your Arms)

I've listened to this song hundred of times while building my Valentine's Page

And another song is Gwen Stefani's Sweet Escape. I love that girl...

I absolutely love music and when I here a song that really gets me moving, it becomes my muse, that gets my creative juices flowing...

Happy listening...

Yes, I'm still working on my Valentine's Day Picture finder. I decided on hiding 14 Cupid Arrows in the scene.

Don't forget to check the final out in Friday's paper.

I love creating picture finders. They're alot of fun to come up with. This year for I created a picture finder for Valentine's Day , though I haven't exactly decided what to hide in the scene.

My boss gave me the idea for the scene, its a kids classroom and they are exchanging valentines with one another.

Here's the rough

I then scanned in my sketch and brought it into Illustrator. I started adding colors and tightening up the kids in the scene.

Here's another sneak peak...