What is There to Wine About?

I recently completed a small editorial project for Wine Access magazine, working with art director Mason Hastie (through RedPoint Media Group in Calgary, Canada). It consisted of a handful of illustration images for a feature article (for their May 2012 issue) entitled "Back To Nature" -which is about a ground swell of interest in natural wines, truly created from nothing but grapes. (in other words, without the nearly 200 additives in conventionally produced wines.) 

Posted here is the sketch and final illustration art I created for the project... a scene depicting the article's author up on her "soapbox" at a wine bar touting the virtues of all-natural wines. (And you can see from the range of expressions of the people around her, she is garnering some interest, but not a lot... meaning it's pretty safe to conclude that conventionally produced wines are not going to be changing their recipes or production procedures anytime soon because of the wonderful but small niche being forged by natural wines.)

preliminary sketch for spread illustration  -visit stevensalerno.com

Above: preliminary sketch created with pencil on paper, then darkened in Photoshop so the line work would better resemble an inked line instead of pencil.

preliminary sketch dropped into layout  -visit stevensalerno.com

Above: preliminary sketch with proposed color roughly added via Photoshop, then dropped into the article's layout, provided by the art director... so I can see that my illustration image is properly allowing for the text copy, headline, and sub-head.

completed final illustration  -visit stevensalerno.com

Above: completed final illustration. The line work of all the characters was created with brush and black gouache on paper. The drawing was then scanned into Photoshop where all the color was created digitally (using simple brush and erase tools) on a separate layer, then the image flattened.

detail from final illustration  -visit stevensalerno.com

Above: detail view of the final completed illustration, showing the waiter character. The gutter of the magazine spread went vertically through the waiter's large tray. 

Illustrator's note: No bottles of wine were harmed during the making of this illustration.  ; )

Visit my web site, stevensalerno.com to view all my illustration portfolio samples, children's books, etc...  Make sure to view my "new stuff" portfolio section!