The New Emerald City

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit my web site. 

I guess the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz was the first city to officially go "green." What most people don't know is that the giant flaming vision of the Wizard's face that scared the Lion enough to jump out the window, was actually solar powered. Glinda,The Good Witch of the North's flying bubble and The Wicked Witch of West's flying broom? ...yup, both were zero-emission transportation. (well, except when the Wicked Witch wrote Dorothy's name in the sky!) And not to mention all the walking, hot air ballooning, and horse-carriage riding everyone did to get where they wanted to go. 

Posted here is an illustration I recently completed for Pittsburgh Magazine, to appear on the cover and also with the feature article inside their next issue about the city going "green"... The illustration depicts a stylized skyline of Pittsburgh as the Emerald City (taken from the article's title). The illustration to be used with the inside article will also contain some additional icons and a rolling green carpet. The illustration was created by using some of my painted textures that I scanned into Photoshop, then merely made specific shapes of them with the lasso tool. I also used the airbrush tool and erase tool to complete the final image... oh, and certain shapes had their opacity levels altered and the "noise" filter effect was used as well. 

Now get out there and follow the green brick road to work tomorrow!

...Socks Are SO Sexy! (aka: the GoldToe ad project)

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit my web site. 

A while ago I created a series of prints ads for the international sock company, GoldToe. The new campaign, was conceived and motivated by their VP and Creative Director, Charles Moretz... as a push to direct a younger consumer toward their quality line of footwear products. (...kind of a "it's not your dad's Oldsmobile anymore" campaign) A renewal process which all large established companies must go through at some point or another to capture a younger generation who may not be as fully aware of the brand as could be. Charles defined the simple tactic: to use illustration for the new ad campaign "For All Walks of Life," to stand out from the competition and in contrast to the sea of photography omnipresent with everything fashion. 

It was a wonderful experience to be in the series of meetings with Charles, to learn about the company, where they are heading, etc... and together direct my imaging, relative to their target audience, to be memorable print ads. There was also talk of possibly using my illustrations for their in-store wall graphics, signs, displays, kiosks, etc... to extend the impact of the ad campaign to the maximum in terms of capturing the attention of the younger audience. (see posted mock-photo of my images used in a store/boutique setting) 

Posted here are three of the ads from the series... the man and woman are kind of visual companions, to give a bit of a romantic story or spin the the ads... Just their legs and feet are seen in the third ad with all the walkers. I also created the hand-lettering for the ad title, “For All Walks of Life.” The ad copy text is positioned in the white space at the bottom. These posted images are too small for you to see, but in the female scene, she has financial data on her hand held device, and in the male scene, there are flowers on his hand held device (the same flowers as in the female scene) to suggest that the two are connected. Also posted at the bottom are a few samples of preliminary "test textures" I created, representing different characteristics of product categories, which may be incorporated into their "in-store" graphics look.

There has been a delay in the release of theses ads nationwide, obviously due to the economy. GoldToe is evaluating when the correct timing to do so will be best, but hopefully it will not be a long delay. So, in the meanwhile, if you are looking for terrific socks, think "gold toe."

Recession Blues? Forget About It! ...throw a party anyway... just buy cheaper cheese

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit my web site. 

Posted here is a drawing I did some time ago, and I cannot remember which client I originally created it for! (I posted it in two segments, enabling it to be seen larger) The line work was done with black gouache using a brush, on top of a background of various big swashes of color, probably with watercolor... 

I think it was for a travel magazine editorial assignment, obviously on the topic of upscale cocktail parties in the city. Throughout my career I have always enjoyed doing scenes with a lot of characters... but from a practical business standpoint, creating a scene with so many different characters takes far more time to execute than an image depicting just a couple main characters. So, if a higher fee at the start of the project assignment cannot be negotiated, it ends up being a labor of love... because the fee usually will not match the number of hours it will take to complete such a dense image. 

Whenever I draw characters, I never use any reference what so ever, unless of course I am doing a caricature of a real person, then I will refer to a photo. When creating faces, I simply draw from my imagination... and living in a city of 9 million people helps. Because after years and years of seeing so many different types of interesting faces on a daily basis I think a kind of "facial type" memory skill is developed! -in this image, I especially like the little guy with the pencil moustache (in the bottom panel) directly under the waiter's arm. He looks like a young James Lipton!

Downtown Manhattan Map...

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit stevensalerno.com

Doing map assignments are certainly fun, but a lot of work too, because the map usually must also include many little icons as a client requirement. Posted here is a recent map image I created for art director Carolyn McClain at Crain's New York Business Weekly -focussing on the downtown financial area of Manhattan. (New York City)

The image was done by painting a background shape (in gouache on watercolor paper) of the island area and the water... and also a simple black line-drawing of the Statue of Liberty, and scanning everything into Photoshop... where I then, in separate layers, created all the icon elements using simple Photoshop tools: people, buildings, food, boats, bridges, birds, textures, etc... Since everything was in layers, I could then easily adjust and fine tune the location of all the elements by moving them around.

Posted above is the full map image, as well as a detail view of a section, so you can better see the detail and textures. As usual, the project was under the time gun... but it came out very well.

An advertising agency in Dallas saw the image, and it almost obtained me an annual report project for one of their clients... but unfortunately I did not get that project. Oh well... you win some and you lose some!

Remember, all you illustrators out there, to negotiate a sufficiently higher fee when offered a map project, because all the related little icons you'll be doing are going to take more time!