Travel on Sale?

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Every couple months I create a handful of spot illustrations for Westways group of magazines, all centered on topics related to your car, car travel, etc... (including flying to other places and then renting a car), Eric Van Eyke, art director.

The illustration posted here was for an article on travel discounts, both by air and sea, to popular tourist destinations... so I came up with a price tag concept, with an eddy and jet stream of a ship and a plane making the "S" in SALE, and icons of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, and the Great Wall of China forming the A, L and E. They were created simply, with black gouache and brush on textured paper, scanned, and the color added in Photoshop. (The "tag," string, and shadow were all done in Photoshop as well.) I like this piece because it is so simple, but still has some rich detail to make it interesting.

More Recession Drawings... (unfortunately)

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The Dow is up, but jobs are still way down.... it seems the all mighty dollar is a more elusive creature than ever before, certainly than compared to the 1990's when the dollar was practically leaping into one's pockets! 

Posted here are a few more of my "recession drawings" which are quick sketchbook brush drawings done directly onto paper without any pre planning... like glorified doodles, which I then scan into Photoshop and add simple, broad color. (see previous recession drawing posting)

What goes down must come up again... right? Looking for signs every day of the "recovery" seems like the old adage, “...a watched pot never boils.” In this case, the water may even still be cooling off, forget about it boiling!

Another web commercial project with Voicewalk in LA

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

Last year I worked with the web animation production studio in Los Angeles named Voicewalk, on a web commercial for client InSight Direct's launch of their new product: VaZing. (see previous post on this project) 

These past few weeks I teamed up with Voicewalk again on another animatic web commercial, this time for client PureSafety. Working with Voicewalk's team of creative director Saul Ives, writer Monica Bowers and animation director Martin Guitar. We moved through the storyboard stages quickly, in part due to now all having worked together before it allowed me to execute a bit more efficiently by having a better understanding how Voicewalk will manipulate my images in the animation process. 

With my "regular" work for print illustration: magazines, advertising, children's books... I usually work with inks, paints etc... and (most of the time) then scan it all into Adobe Photoshop wherein I add digital effects in layers to come up with the final image result. But with these web commercial projects, it requires that I create all the final images as digital vector images, so I create them entirely in Adobe Illustrator. 

My process is this: I take the final storyboard sketch of a scene (in an Adobe Photoshop jpeg format) and open it in Adobe Illustrator, making it a bottom layer named "sketch." Then I stack new layers on top of the locked sketch layer and begin drawing the final image directly on my Wacom 12 x 12 digital drawing tablet. Usually the layers are set up knowing ahead what elements within the image scene that are to be animated, and therefore need to be on a separate layer. The final image is closely based on the sketch layer underneath... and is executed very simply, using various brush tools, shape fills, shape merges, and the only effect I use are gradations between two or three colors. 

Posted above are a few examples of some of the very rough thumbnail storyboards, revised storyboards, and their corresponding final vector images. You can view the final animated web commercial by clicking here.

Ring Flash Cards... Mudpuppy project completed!

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My recent project with the on-line gift store for young kids, Mudpuppy.com was completed recently and all went smoothly working with art director Cynthia Matthews. It consisted of 26 images for flash cards divided between colors and shapes (called "ring" flash cards because they are all held together by a ring). The child must identify the specific color or specific shape depicted in the image. Posted here are four of the final cards: TRIANGLE (mountain), PINK (pig), BLUE (elephant), OCTAGON (spider web) 

The images were all done with black gouache and brush, scanned into Photoshop, then all the color was applied digitally with various brush and erase tools. It's refreshing to do simple images like this, though they take far more time than what it may look! (See the post below showing some of the sketches from this same project.)

Q: What color is this recession?

...another Mudpuppy project... Color Flash Cards for kids

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

Last year I worked with art director Cynthia Matthews at the company Galison (the parent company of mudpuppy.com, the terrific online store for books, games, toys, etc for young kids) on a project called FIRST PUZZLES... a series of three simple puzzles I illustrated that come in one box with a handle. (click here to see earlier post) 

Recently Cynthia hired me for a new project, to illustrate 26 Flash Cards... identifying colors and shapes for young kids.

Just today Cynthia approved most of the sketches... just a few need a bit of adjusting before I can proceed to starting the final artwork. Posted above are just a couple of the approved sketches, PINK (pig) and the GREY (mouse). The text for the cards will either ask what shape? or what color? eg: "What color is this mouse?" ... on the back of each card is the answer.

These images are just scans of pencil line sketches, that were then darkened in Photoshop to approximate the black look of ink line. Next, simple washes of color were indicated using digital color. The final art will be created in gouache paintings which will be scanned and then additional embellishments finalized in Photoshop.

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!

Character sketches from my recent book...

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

In February of this year, my latest author/illustrator picture book for kids was released by Harcourt, entitled “Harry Hungry!” (click here to see previous post)

Above are two preliminary character sketches from very early in the process when I was first exploring how the main character should look... the gastronomically terrorizing tot named Harry. As you can see comparing these initial sketches with the final images from the book, Harry's final look ultimately was not as distorted. But there is a wonderful raw quality of these early sketches, so I thought I'd show them. I think doing a next book project wherein the final images are more in keeping with the roughness of these sketches would be a great look. 

The sketches were created with brush and gouache on white bond paper.