Illustrations: January 2009 Archives

I'lll be the first one to confess (bad joke) I have trouble designing pages for religion stories. I guess because there is already so much art out there already and all the symbolism that is involved with religion can be overwhelming.

The story that goes with this page is about how different faiths deal with confessions and forgiveness. It's a very interesting story and you can read the story in Thursday's York Daily Record.

Here is my page design. The story was my main source for inspiration.

I used about 10 different brush strokes in Illustrator to give my illustration some texture. the edges of the illustration are ragged so when this package is finally placed on the page it will blend in with the other stories and that was my intention.

I designed this illustration for a client of mine. The illustration was created in illustrator. Then the design was converted to a jpeg file and sent to the client. The client in turn sent the design to a company that creates these interactive shirts that respond to sound. Check out the video. Shirts can be purchased online at www.yorkgeeks.com

It's Friday!!! Yeah, I'm escaping but before I do here is one more peek at where I am with my illustration.

Here is the preliminary sketch that I drew for my illustration.

I brought my sketch into Adobe Illustrator Cs3. I put the sketch on it's own layer as a template. And started my final illustration on a top layer.

Here is where I am at so far with the illustration.

Again, the story is about how the media perpetuates an ideal look for society. And that how being thin is the way to go. This puts pressure on many, especially young girls. This constant pressure to look a certain way can lead to eating disorders, low self-esteem and a warped perception of what perfection really is (and how it doesn't exist.)

As a graphic artist, I have the behind the scenes look at what the media does to conjure up a perfect looking specimen, whether its making that juicy hamburger looked grilled to perfection or airbursh models, yeah, there is a ton of airbrushing done to these models you see in magazines. I don't do too much touch-ups here at the paper, because the newspaper doesn't alter photos, but I have done photo altering at my previous jobs, so I know alot about what goes on from removing zits, and cellulite to even making a model look skinnier than she already is... So don't believe the perfection because it doesn't really exist.

My football fan illustration will run in tomorrow's paper...

Illustration done in Adobe Illustrator. I used a lot of different brush strokes to get varying line weights and style.

This is an illustration that is slated to run in tomorrow's York Daily Record Sunday News. Of course, that could all change, at this point I'm not sure when the finish page will be running...

I just finished a sketch that will be my foundation for an illustration I am working on for the Febuary Teen page. The illustration goes with a story about how the media such as magazines put pressure on teens to look a certain way, namely young girls.

My concept was to show a magazine with a model morphing out of the magazine page.

Here is a sneak peek....

My next step will be to take my scan image of my sketch and place it as a template in Adobe Illustrator and begin drawing my illustration.

I love creating picture finders for the holidays. This year for Valentine's Day I had the idea to draw Romeo and Juliet. Susan, an editor in the newsroom thought it might be cute to add other famous romantic couples, and so I took her idea and went a bit farther by drawing pairs of people, cartoon characters, objects, and animals that I felt were happy together.

Here is a sneak peak at my illustration.

Remember it's a picture finder so I will eventually there will be hidden objects to find.

Here is a page design that I created in Adobe Illustrator CS3.

Here is closer look at the illustration.

Straight forward illustration, nothing fancy. Some blends and gradients for shadows and a drop shadow effect was used on the dress.