A Process: Part I

I took on another cover project for the second issue of my friend's magazine. The first, if you'll recall, was a giant watercolor piece that was a scanning nightmare. This may be a nightmare of a different color.

I'm actually going to try and finish it in oils and then shoot it with my new Canon 7D. I prefer to send all color images print-ready at 600 dpi, especially if there is any blackline work in it. However for full-color and no blackline with this method I may not have that option without having to stretch the final image to spec. Stretching images is bad as Photoshop has to interpolate pixels causing them to double-up while at the same time losing clarity.

Regardless, my approach to project is the same.
I started with a plethora thumbnails after some direction was given to me. Then I moved onto character sketches and designs to support the theme and mood that I was hoping to achieve.

Doing my best to keep things loose I roughed out the layout with more detail and some initial shading to see where I might take it.

Using a grid overlay on tracing paper over the rough, I redrew that onto canvas using black prismacolor pencil and then finalized it in ink. Since it's a wrap-around cover I thought it best to have elements of interest large enough on both the front and the back. Seems to be okay so far.

Usually I run into trouble once I start in with the color. Something will bug me and will throw me into a tailspin. Or I'll lose my way and all confidence as to where to take it. Thankfully this first part seems to be fairly straight forward. Now onto the next phase of value study and color options which for these purposes I'll do digitally and quick at that.

More soon...

=s=