Monday, May 10, 2010

I Draw Pictures All Day

I wish that was the case. I have a button I wear on my lapel at school that sarcastically announces just that… but I do enjoy teaching others how to draw pictures, all day.

My job as a freelance illustrator gives me a lot of opportunities to work on a number of different projects, sometimes three or more simultaneously. I have illustrated jobs that are pretty interesting, but there are a number of assignments involving subjects that some would consider rather prosaic or even a little odd. One of the last jobs I finished kind of overlaps both of those descriptions; I thought I’d post examples of the job from start to finish with some explanations of the process.

This job was for Faces magazine, an educational monthly for students in grade school. I have done work for them in the past that included illustrating how a skyscraper is constructed, instructions on how to speak phrases in French, and how an airplane flies. This short one-page article was about Polser, or Danish Hotdogs. Hmm…Danish Hotdogs? I guess features about glaciers or explaining how a Bill becomes a Law have become boring and passé… none the less, I’m happy to get the work, and I’ve already illustrated articles about glaciers and how Bills become Laws. Sometimes these educational articles can be quite boring, so much it can seem like glaciers and Bills becoming Laws move at the same speed.

In a publication like this, illustrators are used primarily to create images that will attract kids to read one of those somewhat boring articles, or when a suitable photo can not be found to accomplish that task. This is why I have drawn illustrations of more than a few glaciers and Bills becoming Laws. Given the photo reference supplied to me by the Art Director for this story on Polser, I think it is pretty apparent why they decided a humorous illustration was a better choice than the photo.
The photo is rather humorous in itself, but not the type of humor I think teachers want introduced into the class room while trying to involve the students in a discussion of fast food in other lands.

Besides the photo, the art director also provided me with a layout and a headline, showing the space allotted for the illustration and the display font chosen for the headline. Other than that, the assignment is “come up with something better than this awful photo”.

The first step in creating an illustration is to sketch up thumbnail roughs. The article mentions that Polsers are served from Polsemandens. Some research (Google images) showed that Polsemandens are pretty much identical to the aluminum Greasewagons used in Philadelphia to serve everything from cheese steaks and pretzels to gyros and falafel. And of course, hot dogs. One is usually parked right outside my work place in Philly, so getting reference for a Polsemanden is not a difficult task. The Art Director for this assignment always includes a note to use “children around 10 years of age, multi ethnicity, and bright colors”. She is pretty good about letting me do what I think looks best, and usually approves my sketches as long as they fit in the space she allotted me without having to juggle the text around too much.
In other words, almost all the assignments I get as a freelancer could be accompanied by a note like this: “here’s an article about __________(in this case, that blank is filled in with “some weird looking hotdogs”). I didn’t write it, so don’t complain to me about the content. We’re paying you to draw something good, so that’s what I want; I want it on time, I want it to fit in the space, and I’ve got a zillion other things to do, so I can’t hold your hand while you come up with something. “
So I sit down and start my thumbnail roughs.

But before I start the thumbnail roughs, there is another task, and sometimes it is the hardest part of these assignments: reading the article itself. A one page article about Danish junk food shouldn’t be that difficult, but when I get something like this I suddenly feel like I’m back in grade school and I’d rather do ANYTHING than read this article and write a report on it. Or in this case, create an illustration about it. However, it’s much easier to get tasks like this accomplished when you’re getting paid for it.

Hmm.. an illustration of multi ethnic middle-school aged kids wearing bright colors enjoying odd looking hotdogs in a Scandinavian setting…well, a few swipes and circles on the paper is a good start. I always start with a few circular shapes, blocking things in, trying to present elements from the article in the most direct manner but not give away too much of the content at the same time… here’s my first thumbnail sketches:

Recalling my own junior high school days, and what pictures in our text books were altered with a ball point pen to amuse classmates, I thought it was probably not a good idea to show anyone holding these phallic shapes to open mouths or biting down on them; however, illustrating them enjoying them is necessary.

After my first few sketches I thought flipping the composition would be a better page layout, so I flopped the rough thumbnail over on my light table in my studio and made a better drawing. A word here about “thumbnail sketches”: traditionally, these are intended to be just little sketches of ideas on paper. If an art director supplies a thumbnail to me for a job, I often receive markings on a piece of paper resembling cave drawings. The better ones sometimes to have a vague sort of organization, but are usually stick figures that are more sticks than figures. My thumbnails sketches begin more as shapes, with little hints of expression and gesture added. And I usually keep building on one that I feel would work as an illustration, so most of my thumbnail sketches keep developing into what others may refer to as “rough sketches” right on the same sheet of paper. So here is my flopped-over rough thumbnail sketch for the Polser article:


Considering how odd this sausage like snack looks compared to our American hot dogs, I thought it might be nice to add some nomenclature to the Polser itself, including the condiments applied to the weiner (…I noticed that the word “weiner” is not used anywhere in this article) So, I added a diagram, and a hungry looking kid who appears to find the notated toppings and main course savory and irresistible. Trying to work in a female figure as well, I drew a young girl enjoying a hot Polser fresh from the Polsermanden ( the wagon itself, not the guy inside making them). Given that I would like to feature bright colors, I thought it would be nice to give the young lady feasting on this Danish delight a retro-70’s look with some pattern on her outfit.

I’m really lousy drawing appropriate clothing, especially on females. One complaint from an art director was most of the clothing I draw on characters looks too 1980s. Gee, I always thought of my fashion sense as “classic”. I have never been what you may call a clothes horse, or a slave to fashion; I may buy clothing once or twice a year and then it’s usually purchased from the marked-down rack at The Gap or J.C. Penny. I rely on my wife, daughters, or students at school to give me an idea of what is hip or appropriate for clothing the subjects in my illustrations. The advice from my students is dicey, however; when you teach at an all-women’s art and design college that includes courses ranging from fashion design to metal sculpture, you see some pretty interesting fashion statements. You'll see some girls wearing ripped jeans and shirts from a designer boutique they paid a premium for, and some fine arts students wearing nearly identical items. The difference is the fashion students spent hours shopping for theirs, and the fine arts students just happened to tear their jeans and sweatshirts while salvaging pieces of metal for their next sculpture project from a dumpster behind the scool.
Once I’m satisfied with the layout and placement of elements in the composition, I put another piece of tracing paper over it and finalize a rough sketch. This is the one I will send to the art director, so I make it look as close to the final as possible. I also use a pencil to indicate value, giving me an idea of negative and positives within the illustration, When I start on the first thumbnails, I’m sketching shapes and lines but thinking about the negatives and positives within the composition, and where I will eventually add color. I learned a lot studying the cartoon illustrations of Will Eisner (creator of The Spirit) and Wally Wood (who at one time ghosted for Eisner on The Spirit ), but also have picked up a lot by looking at the classic illustrations of N.C. Wyeth and Norman Rockwell. As Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot just by looking”.


Using the miracle of Photoshop on my studio laptop, I can scan the drawing I completed and place it into the jpeg of the layout provided by the art director. I often resize elements within my sketch at this point to make things fit better. I have to allow for the artwork to get cut off at the edge of the page (the bleed, we call it) , so I sometimes need to draw a little extra background or something that I know will most likely get trimmed off during the printing process.


Hopefully, the artwork gets approved by the Editors without too many changes, and I can start the final. I take a printout of the file I sent to the art director, enlarge it 25%, and do a finished illustration by placing another piece of tracing paper over it and doing a neat, clean, rendering with a #2 drawing pencil. I do not add in any value or shading at this point, but I do make adjustments to the people and elements within the illustration.
I then scan the finished neat, clean rendering and adjust the contrast using Photoshop. I used to put my approved roughs on a light table and then do an inking over them with a brush and ink, but I was covering up a lot of nice spontaneous pencil work that way; this technique makes my pencil lines appear to be inked, and keeps a little more energy in my final illustration. Nowadays my original illustrations are pencil drawings on tracing paper.

I do a quick color comp using colored pencils on a printout of my approved rough before I do any final colors, creating a “color map” to refer to when I do the final illustration. Making color decisions on the final art, even when it’s digital, is inviting a mess of values and colors.
I decided to use a red-yellow-green color scheme throughout, to pick up the color of the Polser and the red, yellow, and green of the ketchup, mustard, and pickle toppings. Also taking into account the fork and globe graphic that will be used on the page, I decided to make the business man placing an order for a Polser wear a blue suit and added blue into the sign on the front of the Polsemanden.

So working with the adjusted scan of my final artwork, I switch the property of the Photoshop layer to “multiply” and then start blocking in large shapes of color underneath. The color fills in area under the black line work of my drawing, and I simply fill all my shapes with flat colors, similar to using crayons in a coloring book. I’m even careful to stay within the lines…


After I have all the areas flat-colored, I can select the areas and use the airbrush and gradient fill tools in Photoshop to give the illustration more life. I sometimes work in several layers, with the sky and the green of the bushes and grass underneath the main characters. I try to take into consideration a light source and other colors that may appear in the shadows or sky, much like I do when I paint with oils or watercolors.

Finally, I have a finished digital illustration that I can send to the Art director. I usually flatten all the layers, create a jpeg, and send it as an email attachment. The artwork is sized digitally so the art director can simply drop it into place using the design program they are creating the magazine with.
(When I get the printed piece back in September I'll scan it and post it up here...)

I have found that I almost never hear from Art Directors after I deliver a job unless there is something wrong with the illustration or an editor has asked for a change. After all, they have a zillion things to do, and if I can give them an illustration on time that they can simply drop into place, they have one less task to complete. Hopefully, they will show me their appreciation for meeting the deadline by giving me another assignment. I’m pretty good at drawing illustrations of glaciers and Bills becoming Laws…
-Posted by Rich Harrington