#illustrationmasterclass

I attended The Illustration Master Class this year. This was my final image. The assignment I took was a book cover for the third installment of the Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor. The entire experience was a blast and I recommend it for anyone wanting to improve as an illustrator. 

My plane arrived Sunday morning. I met up with DreamWorks story artist, former student, and friend, Alice Herring at the airport, and drove to Amherst College. 

The IMC doesn’t begin until Monday morning; Sunday allows for everyone to get settled in and a little rest before the intense art creating begins. Many participants were still thumbnailing away Sunday night.

Monday is critique day. Hours are spent reviewing each student’s work. My work went on the wall early in the day. I pinned up all three sets of my thumbnails.

Discovery thumbs

John Jude Palencar and Donato gravitated to the Discovery thumbnails - Donato liked the idea of my attempting a quieter moment as I often portray moments including a lot of action. 

Posting up my thumbs on the crit wall (I am in the white T-shirt with the image on the back), picture thanks to Marvin Silva

Notes on my thumbs included suggesting more to the environment and adding movement to the water, breaking up the surface reflection. I proceeded to create more thumbnails, exploring these ideas.

Adding the suggestion of structures in the BG

Creating more space, but losing the dynamic the reflection contributes

Simplifying the sculpture and pulling down the composition to allow for the reflection. The hard to identify hand has become a foreground boat.

Pushing the boat in to overlap the sculpture, this became the final thumbnail from which the drawing was designed.

I decided that I would like to incorporate the illustration into the Garden Clan world I am creating; something I enjoyed doing with the previous year’s IMC prompt. The characters in the boats became rabbit faeries whereas the sculpture already fit right into my faerie elf designs. The birds flying had to either become some kind of bug or disappear; eventually they disappeared.

Still working in Procreate, I refined the thumbnail, creating a careful drawing. The foreground character is identifiable as a rabbit, the “birds” are still in the image, but, at  this point, I thought they might become fireflies.

My little workspace at the IMC - still working digitally at this point

I determined the dimensions of the finished image and cut a piece of Fabriano Artistico HP watercolor paper to size (I accidentally used 140 lb - normally I use 300 lb but had packed the wrong paper). Defining a border, usually about 1/2 to 1 inch, I tape the watercolor paper to my drawing board.

The drawing was printed onto a sheet of bond paper. Using a brown conte crayon (you can see the conte crayons in the above image), I covered the entire back of the paper with conte.

Carefully, trying to dislodge as little conte onto the watercolor paper as I can, I position and tape the printed drawing over top the watercolor paper. Once the print out is secure, I trace over the drawing, transferring the image to the watercolor paper.

The transferred image with the stern erased

At this point, Donato took a look and thought the stern of the boat was awfully simple in design and encouraged me to create a more interesting look to the boat. Back in Procreate, I reworked the design of the stern of the boat, adding the rabbit’s head talisman as well as designing a more interesting keel.

The transferred drawing lacks vitality; the line work is dead and inconsistent. I use colored pencils to refine the transferred drawing; effectively redrawing the image. I work first with a brown Colerase pencil, then follow up with a Carandache Brown colored pencil.

Jada Rowland captured me in action as I worked on the pencil drawing

Coloerase pencil drawing in progress

Finished Carandache colored pencil drawing

Before moving to color, I like to first lay down a value underpainting. I normally use Raw Umber, but as this scene was a predominantly cool night scene, I elected to use Payne’s Gray.

Value underpainting in Payne’s Gray

My preferred painting medium is Casein. Casein will dry so that it can be worked over without reactivating, but it takes a bit of time to set. Once I completed the value painting, I returned to Procreate to explore color studies, allowing the value painting to set. I prefer to explore color studies with traditional media, which allows me to paint the studies using the specific paints I will ultimately use, but the constraints of limiting my tools to what I can bring to the IMC event result in my using digital tools to explore the color studies. I explored a few potential palettes.

First color study - felt too contrasty

Second color study, exploring a warmer pallette

The color study I employed, closer to the first, but more understated

In the next installment, color is added!

Tools Used:

Preliminary digital:

iPad Pro

Apple Pencil

Astropad app

Procreate app

Traditional materials:

Col-Erase Pencils Brown.

Caran D’Ache Pablo colored pencils Brown. (Their Luminance series are even nicer! – I also like their watercolor pencils for sketching: Supracolor and Museum.)

140 lb Hot Press Fabriano Artistico Watercolor Paper (I usually use 300 lb, packed the wrong paper!)

Da Vinci Cosmotop Spin Brushes I use a synthetic brush as Casein is hard on brushes – I very much like the Da Vinci Cosmotop.

Richeson Shiva Casein Paints

Discovery Pt 1 can be found here.

Discovery Pt 3 can be found here. 

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The Illustration Master Class is an annual, week long, intensive illustration workshop held in Amherst Massachusetts. Organized by Rebecca Leveille Guay, the event provides the opportunity for those wishing to develop and learn as illustration artists (such as myself) to study and explore creating illustration art with some of the most illustrious illustrators working today.

I attended the IMC for the first time last summer and decided (as many participants do) to return. I had a better idea as to what to expect this year - and knew it would be an intense and exhausting experience. 

Isaacius and the Snake: The illustration I created at last year’s IMC

The event actually begins about one month before the trip to Amherst College. The participants receive Prompts; illustration problems from which you can select to address in the illustration you create during your week’s time at the IMC. Participants are asked to select a prompt and create one to four thumbnails exploring possible visual solutions. 

Required for ALL Focus Groups [students select a focus group when registering, 1a is the narrative traditional illustration (my selection), 1b is narrative digital illustration, and 2 is the Gallery group]:

Come to class with 1-4

concept sketches for the crit wall on day one. These thumbnails by Greg Manchess are a good representation of what we

would like to see for concept sketches: a clear border for the piece, clear gestures and shapes, and an indication of the overall value scheme.

 Creating multiple sketches helps to flesh out your concept from different angles and will give the faculty members a selection from which they will center their critique around the concept with the strongest potential.

There were quite a few prompts provided; I selected two to explore, but also pursued thumbnails revolving around a story I am creating - as the IMC also allows participants to set aside the prompts and work on a personal project. The prompts I explored included:

1) From Irene Gallo (Art Director: Tor Books)

Mystical Discovery / Remnants of Ancient Culture

Fantasy or science fiction.

A single person or group comes across a mystical place. It could be an ancient temple or half buried structure (fantasy or alien structure on a

planet), a magical beast, or even the landscape itself (a particularly impressive waterfall, tree, etc.) The idea is to create a sense of wonder and/or a setting with an ancient past unknown to our characters.

2) From Cynthia Sheppard (Art Director: Magic: The Gathering)

These are hypothetical Magic: The Gathering card art assignments.

Art Title: Woodland Summoner

Size: 3334 x 2449 pixels / W: 53mm x H: 40mm • Sketch Due: 6/12/2017 • Final Due: 6/18/2017

Art Description:

Setting: Nonspecific

plane.

Color: Green creature

Location: Deep in a forest

Action: We see a male elf shaman raising a wooden staff in some kind of summoning ritual. The head of the staff is carved to look like a stylized animal's head, and its “eyes” glow with green magic. On either side of the elf, forest creatures are emerging perhaps

a wolf, a stag, a wild boar up to you. All the creatures’ eyes glow with the same green magic, as though they’re under the shaman’s control.

Mood: “All the forest is my protection"

Focus: The elf

Notes: Elves in Magic have taken many appearances depending on their plane of origin since this isn’t set on a specific plane, pointy ears are the only requirement the rest is yours to design.

3) Ambush The piece designed to illustrate a moment from the story I am writing is captured in the following text:

Lucky and Jinx had found their father. The signal fire that had drawn Patch’s attention lit the glade, shadows leaping as the flames danced. Their dad, sword extended in both hands, stood back to back with Patch and two other armed rabbit warriors. On the ground, another rabbit lay motionless. The rat the boys had followed through the wood joined another, very large rat, and two goblin warriors (one walking with a noticeable limp) encircling their father and his companions.  The rabbits were in trouble.

I like to sketch in Procreate with my Apple Pencil on my iPad Pro. I set the background color to a neutral brown, sketching with a darker brown and white. I sketch with various Procreate brushes, predominantly using the HB, 6B, and Pastel Chalk tools.

Not knowing which direction my work may progress (my initial sketches changed dramatically after the first day of critique last year), I still decided to shoot reference in preparation for the week. Even with the substantial changes made the year before, the reference imagery I had prepared served my very well. I shot a lot of reference for each prompt and for each of the thumbnails. 

One of the ideas was situated on a quiet, reflective body of water. I built a clay model and shot the image set on a mirror. 

I built reference for the rats and rabbits. 

I also gathered inspirational imagery, stills from films and inspirational art. I am only displaying a very small selection of the reference imagery I created and collected here.

I printed the three sets of thumbnails to pin up during the critique. In advance of the IMC week, we were asked to sign up to have our work critiqued by select faculty groups. Last year I had registered with Greg Manchess, Irene Gallo, and Mike Mignola. This year I elected to receive Critique from Donato Giancola and John Jude Palencar, figuring it would be good to mix it up a bit. The faculty spend time with everyone during the week, so I knew I would receive feedback from both Greg and Irene as the week progressed. 

Ready for the week, I packed up my resources, supplies, clothes, etc. and boarded a plane for the east coast!

To be continued!

Tools Used:

iPad Pro

Apple Pencil

Procreate app

Canon Rebel SL1

Discovery Pt 2 can be found here.  Discovery Pt 3 can be found here.