MON PARIS... illustrating a travel article

On a somewhat regular basis over the past handful of years, I create small spot illustrations for the Westways group of magazines (which are the automobile AAA magazines) for their DriveSmart and TravelSmart columns. The Design Director I always work with is Eric Van Eyke... (see my earlier post about these assignments).

But recently, I was also contacted by the Westways Art Director, Lori Anderson about creating a full-page illustration for one of their feature travel articles on Paris, entitled MON PARIS. (I think it is for their January 2014 issue of Westways) I said yes to the project before even reading the manuscript, as I had been eager to work on an assignment for Westways other than for the small spot illustrations I usually do for the DriveSmart and TravelSmart columns.

The key to this travel article was visiting Paris and hanging out in one particular neighborhood and purposely not indulging in all the expected tourist venues, but rather enjoying the nuances of regular everyday life, like a Parisian. The writer describes people and things seen while sitting at the same neighborhood cafe each morning over cafe creme, croissants and reading the paper. It is this scene that I illustrated. 

Posted below is the sketch and final drawings I created. The final drawings were all scanned into Photoshop, and then positioned, modified, manipulated, and layered with color and textures, etc... to arrive at the completed illustration...

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This is my initial sketch. It is simply a black crayon pencil sketch with just a bit of gouache color indicating the coffee. Of course, I go though an earlier much rougher version before this one, but the sketch shown here is the level of "tightness" in a sketch I like to show to an art director, because ultimately it saves time. If a sketch shown to an art director is too rough, they have questions about it which then prompts having the do a second tighter version anyway... so why not just give them that level right at the start. Particularly in the instance of working with an art director for a first time. The more you work with the same art director, the more and more you can get away with "sketch shorthand" because they begin to understand what your final art will look like, even from seeing just a very rough sketch.

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This is what I then showed to the art director. It is my initial B&W sketch which I scanned into Photoshop and added digital color layers.... which as you can see I elected to use just monochromatic yellows/oranges in the background and limited full color in the foreground for the coffee cup and croissants. This sketch was quickly approved by the art director and editors, so I had the "green light" to proceed with creating the final art. 

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This is a close-up view of the waiter character from the initial sketch.

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Based on the preliminary sketch that was approved by the art director, this is the "final stage art" drawing of the foreground portion of the illustration, the cup of coffee, croissants, and the Le Monde newspaper. It was drawn with black crayon, and embellished with black gouache (with a brush).

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Detail view of the croissant.

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Based on the preliminary sketch that was approved by the art director, this is the "final stage art" drawing of the middle portion of the illustration. It is of all the characters seen sitting in the cafe, walking the sidewalks, and standing at the patisserie across the street. It was drawn with black crayon, black ink pen, and embellished with black gouache (with a brush). Some of the tones were created by smearing the ink line with a wetted finger immediately after having drawn the line.

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Detail of the characters sitting in the cafe.

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Based on the preliminary sketch that was approved by the art director, this is the "final stage art" drawing of two of the characters: the waiter and the woman seen at the top window watering her flowers. It was drawn with black crayon, black ink pen, and embellished with black gouache (with a brush). Some of the tones were created by smearing the ink line with a wetted finger immediately after having drawn the line. (The "mutton-chop" sideburns and pompadour hairstyle on the waiter was as described in the article!)

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Detail of the waiter drawing.

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Based on the preliminary sketch that was approved by the art director, this is the "final stage art" drawing of of the background portion of the illustration... the building facades, signs, etc...  It was drawn with black ink pen, and black crayon. As soon as I created this background drawing, I immediately knew I had made the line work much too dark... but did not worry, because I knew that once I scanned the drawing into Photoshop I could then manipulate the line to make it lighter.

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This is a speckled texture I created, done by rubbing a toothbrush into slightly watery black gouache and then "flicking" the bristles of the brush with my thumb (held about 12" inches above the paper surface) such that a fine spray of dots hits across the paper. I also used a dark brown crayon to then draw horizontal streaks across the speckled texture. This texture was scanned into Photoshop and layered into my final illustration.

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This is a view of all the above elements that I had scanned into Photoshop, which were compiled in layers to compose the final illustration scene. I altered the black lines of all the the middle ground and background objects/characters so that these lines were now more of a sepia/brown color instead of black. This was done so the "still-life" objects in the front (coffee/croissants/newspaper) rendered in black, would pop more in prominence. I also faded all the middle ground and background lines a little bit, to also make it all seem further back within the scene. On a new layer I added in the yellow color and "erased" some of the yellow (effectively creating white) to highlight the waiter and make the effect of the steam rising from the coffee. The "speckled" texture was added over the entire composition but then strategically "erased out" so that it remained in only some areas, like on the buildings and also streaked across the street a bit.

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Next, I added a layer of darker orange to bring more graphic richness and definition... which I also used as the color of the coffee in the cup, to help relate the foreground with the rest of the scene. Employing such limited color in the middle ground and background assists in making a very

detailed/busy area of the image to become more unified, and brings some needed simplicity to the overall feel... and of course also acts as a way of bringing more attention to the foreground elements.

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Here is the final illustration... with blues and greens and more yellow added into the foreground objects.

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Detail view of the waiter and the woman sitting at the cafe with her little dog. Here you can better see how I orchestrated the use of the speckled texture sparingly. I love the subtle, simple descriptions of all the little characters seen in the background.

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Detail view of the lovers kissing, and the old man carrying his baguettes. The street is Rue Vavin, and the cafe the writer was sitting at is named Cafe Vavin... and I think it is located in the 6th Arrondisement.

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Detail view of the coffee.

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I also created a small spot illustration of the Eiffel Tower, to accompany the large main illustration. It was created in the same step process as described above for the cafe scene illustration...

I am looking forward to seeing the final printed copy of Westways magazine, the January 2014 issue. Seeing the images in tandem with the words (within the designer's page design) for which they were created is what it's all about as an illustrator.

Visit my illustration web site, stevensalerno.com to view all my portfolio sections... make sure to see my NEW STUFF section and all my picture books for children!

Recession Drawings #34 & #35 (...And the Beating Goes On)

Hmmmm...Did VP Joe Biden say: "The Summer of Recovery" a short while back? Was he talking about this summer? Maybe he meant to say: "The Summer of Drudgery?" or possibly, "A Bummer of a Recovery?"

I was just wondering, because things are slow all over and getting slower... housing sales and prices continue to drop. Construction is down. New jobs are not materializing, salaries are stagnant, etc... Some summer. Gee, maybe the "Fall of Fabulousness" is next!

So, I came up with the doodle of the globe as a snail, barely chugging along through the summer of recovery. Also an image of a red chair with a shadow of four legs, but the chair has one leg missing. -a loose concept suggesting stability is not what it used to be, and we are trying to perceive that things are as they used to be before. In other words, 4 is the new 3. Click here to see some previous "recession" doodles. And here...

My Web Site Has a New Look -check out stevensalerno.com

from "vector/characters" portfolio

from "the good life" portfolio section

view of the home page

detail from site background and logo

If you have not been to my main illustration web site, stevensalerno.com in a while, take a look... you'll notice a big change. It seems every four years I really want to make a significant renovation to my sites, and I usually do, developing the design myself and hiring a designer/programmer to implement the site. This time it took about six years though before I got around to it!

And it was not a renovation but a complete change: I switched over to a design/hosting company, livebooks.com, and this time I did not create a new site design per se, but worked within a customization of one of their multitude of template variations.This site conveniently has an internal editing administration feature so I can simple drag & drop in new items, take old images out, rename portfolios, modify image descriptions and menu words, etc... all in a blink. Very convenient for a non-code writing guy who is simply too busy making images all the time. (I had used livebooks.com to develop my golf art prints web site, sasgolf.com -which is how I came to decide to also use them for my illustration web site as well. 

This new site design is very simple, less bells & whistles compared to my previous all-flash site... but it gets the job done of simply displaying my illustration samples quite nicely.

Move Over Mr. Clean

See all my portfolio samples at stevensalerno.com                                                                                   
I have completed a couple of projects for a certain client, who was also testing out the possibility of a new business venture, and hired me to play around with a new logo concept for it.

The character I created was, of course, derived from the name of the animal in the company name, OX... so it was just a matter of executing it in a graphic manner that seemed to match the tone that was expressed to me by the client. I was looking to be very simple yet provide enough detail in the line expression to give the character some life and animation. In fact, the logo will animate if the project sees the light of day... shaking his horns, stomping the ground with his hooves and snorting steam!

Since there is not yet any font treatment associated with the new business logo, for the purposes of placing my art, I also created the dummy type treatment seen here, so the art could begin to mesh with the logo in total... though my vision of the font's look is just temporary.

This image was created in Adobe Illustrator (vector-based) and just a matter of drawing the black line defining the ox character, then filling in a simple color wash. It seems the client liked the red version, but I prefer the blue version as I feel it better relates to the "steam" aspect within the service.
Who knows, maybe someday we'll all see this tough little ox being promoted on TV.

Want a BIG apartment in Manhattan? (bring your Brinks truck)

See all my portfolio samples at stevensalerno.com 

I created a large 1/2 page illustration for the cover page of the New York Times Sunday Real Estate section (6/27/10 issue date) ... depicting a baby in a buggy, and along the side of the buggy is a blueprint floor plan of a large 4 bedroom apartment. 

(see top image of the printed newspaper page. Below that is the final illustration art as submitted to the art director.... and the bottom image is a shot of the piece in progress on my drawing table. The line drawing of the baby and the buggy and the little characters at the bottom were done with brush and black gouache on watercolor paper. The interior blue color of the buggy was also gouache and painted separately, then layered in with Photoshop. The background light blue building shapes were also created in Photoshop, as well and the white lines of the apartment diagram on the side of the buggy.) 

The article comments on the fact that in recent years there's been a surge of 3 to 7 bedroom apartments making their way into the domain marketplace, to keep up with the growing demand for large apartments from the people with children and who no longer want to relocate to the suburbs once their family size calls for more space. I gave the baby a pleased countenance, no doubt from having a very big apartment to romp around in... Maybe I should have also placed a silver spoon in the baby's mouth, as 3 to 7 bedroom apartments range from $2.5 million to $7 million (and up!) Can you say, "Holy Foyer, Batman!?"

I had worked with the Real Estate section art director, Carol Dietz, years ago, but in a different section of the newspaper... I am so glad she called me for this fun assignment. I had not worked for the NYTimes in quite awhile, so it's "good to be back"...

I first began creating drawings for The New York Times back in 1980 (yes, before fax machines, before personal computers, before e-mail...) back in the days when the art director paraphrased the assignment's article to you over the phone so you could get started on the sketch stage. Then you actually went to their office at the (old) Times Building in Times Square on West 45th Street, was screened through security, and first showed your sketch to the art director who then disappeared for a while to show the sketch to the editors... Then the same process was repeated again when you came back a day or two later delivering the completed final art, and handing it over so they could make a photostat of it and paste a B&W print of the art onto the layout mechanical... yes, with glue! When I look back on it, I now realize why I could eat countless cheeseburgers and pizza and never gain an ounce over 135 lbs.... because I was running all over the city delivering sketches and final art every day of the week!

In 1980 I was a skinny kid just out of art school one year, a graduate of Parsons School of Design in NYC, where I had studied under J.C. Suares. J.C. (who had previously been the NYTimes Op Ed page art director and was currently the AD at New York Magazine) gave me my first illustration assignments at New York Magazine the week after I graduated from design school. He then also introduced me to Jerelle Kraus who was the reigning AD of the Op Ed page. She liked my work and I somehow managed to regularly contribute drawings to the Op Ed page and Letters to the Editor page from 1980 through about 1985. A couple years ago in 2008, Jerelle released her book, "All the Art That's Fit to Print, And Some That Wasn't" recounting her many years as the Op Ed page art director, including all the run-ins with the editors, as well as showcasing many of the artists who contributed to the page... including the likes of Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Brad Holland, etc... and me! (see my previous post on Jerelle's book) 

During those early years and in subsequent years I created drawings for the Op Ed page, but also created illustrations appearing in many of the NY Times other sections, too. The Book Review, Business page, Sunday Magazine, etc... but by the end of the 1990's I was only doing maybe one illustration a year for the NYTimes. From about 2000 through 2007 my major newspaper client was The Wall Street Journal, as I was the regular illustrator for their Finicky Traveler column. 

For the past few years I have been busy with my usual projects in advertising, children's books, magazines, packaging, and some animation character imaging for the web, etc... but have not really had a consistent gig with a major newspaper... so this recent New York Times Sunday Real Estate project hopefully will begin a renewed contact with the newspaper again! I am looking forward to the possibility.