Friday, July 27, 2012

SALTY assignment

I have worked with Pam Winn, the Associate Art Director at Fine Cooking magazine in the past... (The Art Director of the publication is Don Morris, who is also head of Don Morris Design here in NYC. Don and I graduated from Parsons School of Design together many moons ago, and I have worked on projects with him and his design team many times. ) So when Pam contacted me recently to work with her on another new assignment for Fine Cooking, I was looking forward to it.

This new project was to create an illustration for their Food Science section, on the subject of SALT, one of the five basic tastes we are all hard wired to detect on our palate: bitter, sweet, sour, savory... and salt. Essentially the article describes a bit of historical background on salt, as well as explaining the matter of fact science behind how salt affects our various foods (from meats to vegetables) in the cooking, brining and flavoring processes. Plus it provides a glossary of salt, so the reader can learn all the different types of salts available. In other words, the article I was to illustrate was a mini-encyclopedic spread all about salt. There was no call for having to derive at a conceptual image... but rather (no pun intended), merely arrive at a visual flavor using various iconic images of salt.

The article described the two main ways of extracting salt, the first from salt mines and the other from the seas... so I decided to create vignettes of these two different processes as vignettes in each corner of the required long horizontal space. To romanticize these vignettes, I chose a retro look, by depicting a lone rock salt miner and a lone sea salt harvester in action... rather than depict the modern machinery which does these jobs today. Then I elected to show probably the most iconic symbol of salt for western culture, the salt shaker. Then I threw in a salt molecule and steak, for varietal contrast. 


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Posted above is the initial doodle of my sketch idea, which I made as I was reading the article manuscript. At his stage I am really just scribbling... no concern for line quality because the art director will never see this stage. It is just to get the image in my head quickly out onto paper to begin to see how the various visual elements will work together (and relative to the article) as well as to begin to see
how things work within the required limitations of the compositional space.

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Posted above is the next stage sketch. It is actually five different sketches (the salt shaker, the salt molecule, the steak, the miner, and the harvester) which are all compiled in Photoshop to construct the formal sketch. I knew that I was probably going to keep the color palette for the final art image limited to mostly blues, so for these sketches I used blue ink pen, blue crayon, and blue pencil.

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Posted above is the official final sketch version which I initially showed to Pam Winn at Fine Cooking magazine. In this version I had also dropped in the blue textural background, which was created with brusk strokes of blue gouache on a roughly textured paperboard. The response was mostly favorable... they just felt that the words within the sketch could be taken out. I showed another version which included the hand wording (not shown here), but eventually it was decided that the words would indeed not be used.

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Posted above is the final illustration that was submitted for publication. The background was created with brushstrokes of blue gouache on a rough textured paper. The salt shaker was drawn with blue pastel with added digital color. The salt molecule was drawn with black crayon with added digital color. The steak was drawn with red oil crayon with added digital color. The rock salt miner and the sea salt harvester were drawn with blue ink pen on a smooth surface paper. The white color you see inside the salt shaker, the white color of the rock salt and the salt mounds, and the white color seen on the fatty part of the steak -were all created by "erasing" out the blue background, which was the bottom layer of the image during the layered stage in Photoshop.


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above: detail of the sea salt harvester

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above: detail of the rock salt miner

This SALT illustration falls into the category of the "new" style of images I have been creating thus far in 2012. (see the NEW STUFF portfolio section on my web site.) 

Many art directors know me more for the light, whimsical illustrations that I have created for many years now.... especially for all the children's picture books I have illustrated. This "new" darker, moodier, more realistic style of mine is actually just reviving my own style from when I first started illustrating many years ago. In other words, I am excited to be exploring my own style from the past, and making it new again. (of course, I am indeed still creating the whimsical illustrations too, specifically for my children's picture books. My next illustrated picture book, BOOM! will be released in 2013 by Hyperion Books, which is an imprint of Disney.)



Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Tatoo You


If you visit my illustration web site, on view are samples of work I have done in the past for advertising, product packaging, children's picture books, etc... all in a light, whimsical visual manner that many art directors have come to rely on for their particular projects. And I still do indeed create such illustration images in this same whimsical manner, particularly for on-going children's picture book projects. 

But this year, I have begun to also show a category of "new" illustrated images of mine, created in a darker, more realistic visual mode.... in other words, kind of the polar opposite of the expected "whimsical" imagery I have become known for. You can see many of these "new" images in the NEW STUFF portfolio section on stevensalerno.com. 

Some people have made comments to me about these new images, exclaiming it is so interesting that I have suddenly come up with a totally new style for myself... but in fact, I have always drawn and made images like these all my life as an artist. Though over the past 20 years I consciously decided to never show them to art directors because as an illustrator during this time period I was purposely only offering my "lighter/whimsical" illustration style, as it allowed me to work for a much broader range of clients, particularly in advertising, and earn far more income. (compared to if I had offered only an illustration style of a darker psychological nature) In fact, these new images of mine are actually along the same stylistic manner as the illustrations I created very early in my career....say from 1980 through about 1986. But dark, intense images only got me editorial projects during that time period. So in about 1990 I purposely lightened the visual approach to my illustration style... and began getting advertising projects, packaging projects, etc.... as well as an even greater range of editorial projects.

Now here it is 2012, and I have been in the illustration biz for 30+ years.... and I am now also offering this "new style" which is not really new to me at all of course, but art directors are indeed seeing it as new. The stylized, light "whimsical" illustrations I create are certainly still fun to do (particularly for picture books), but are actually more of a conscious calculated endeavor in the creation process. The images you see posted in the NEW STUFF section of stevensalerno.com is actually the raw natural way that I draw and think. So I just figured it is time again to show these 'darker" images to art directors and see what happens... to see what kind of projects I get. And thus far I have done some cool images in this darker style for the likes of The New York TimesThe Chicago Tribune, and Harper's magazine...

Posted above is a recent drawing I created of a woman covered with tatoos... and some of the body markings are spilling out into the space surrounding her. This image started out as a mere doodle of just a woman's face in my sketchbook, but it kept expanding... I completed her body and then began to add the markings and purposely made them become a part of the scribbling and doodles orbiting around her. I then layered the line art onto a painted gouache background and manipulated the colors.

Visit stevensalerno.com to view all my portfolios... and be sure to take a look at the NEW STUFF section.

Keep The Fight Clean, Boys

If you visit my illustration web site, on view are samples of work I have done in the past for advertising, product packaging, children's picture books, etc... all in a light, whimsical visual manner that many art directors have come to rely on for their particular projects. And I still do indeed create such illustration images in this same whimsical manner, particularly for on-going children's picture book projects. 

But this year, I have begun to also show a category of "new" illustrated images of mine, created in a darker, more realistic visual mode.... in other words, kind of the polar opposite of the expected "whimsical" imagery I have become known for. You can see many of these "new" images in the NEW STUFF portfolio section on stevensalerno.com. 

Some people have made comments to me about these new images, exclaiming it is so interesting that I have suddenly come up with a totally new style for myself... but in fact, I have always drawn and made images like these all my life as an artist. Though over the past 20 years I consciously decided to never show them to art directors because as an illustrator during this time period I was purposely only offering my "lighter/whimsical" illustration style, as it allowed me to work for a much broader range of clients, particularly in advertising, and earn far more income. (compared to if I had offered only an illustration style of a darker psychological nature) In fact, these new images of mine are actually along the same stylistic manner as the illustrations I created very early in my career....say from 1980 through about 1986. But dark, intense images only got me editorial projects during that time period. So in about 1990 I purposely lightened the visual approach to my illustration style... and began getting advertising projects, packaging projects, etc.... as well as an even greater range of editorial projects.

Now here it is 2012, and I have been in the illustration biz for 30+ years.... and I am now also offering this "new style" which is not really new to me at all of course, but art directors are indeed seeing it as new. The stylized, light "whimsical" illustrations I create are certainly still fun to do (particularly for picture books), but are actually more of a conscious calculated endeavor in the creation process. The images you see posted in the NEW STUFF section of stevensalerno.com is actually the raw natural way that I draw and think. So I just figured it is time again to show these 'darker" images to art directors and see what happens... to see what kind of projects I get. And thus far I have done some cool images in this darker style for the likes of The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and Harper's magazine...

Posted below is a recent drawing I created of a boxing scene... of the moments just before the fight starts when the ring announcer is introducing the fighters and the referee is reminding the opponents of all the things they should not do during the fight. The figures were created with a blue ink fountain pen and layered on top of a background I painted using gouache on rough paperboard. I like the look and feel of the blue/green atmoshere, with just the slight hint of all the people in the their seats anticipating the fight...

Visit stevensalerno.com to view all my portfolios... and be sure to take a look at the NEW STUFF section.


new illustration... visit stevensalerno.com

new illustration (close-up view)... visit stevensalerno.com

new illustration (detail view)... visit stevensalerno.com