interview with Steven Salerno

illustration by Steven Salerno  visit stevensalerno.com

For the fall 2012 on-line issue of Creating Linus arts magazine I was interviewed about my career in illustration... (note: this interview is no available as an active link on Creating Linus on-line magazine -sorry!). The interview gives a brief overview of the path of my career, up to the current point in time where my style is going through another evolution. 

Visit stevensalerno.com to view all my illustration portfolios, children's picture books, etc...

The Life of a Doodle

In my portfolio section named NEW STUFF at stevensalerno.com ...some of the illustrations posted there are indeed for published assignments, but many are images I created on my own, as part of the process to introduce a "new" style of creating illustrations, different than my expected "whimsical" manner of styling illustrations that most art directors over the years have come to know me for, especially with the many children's picture books I have illustrated.

I have received many terrific comments on these "new" style images of mine, done in a darker, moodier manner. (but they really are not new at all.) Actually they are a resurrection of the dark, moody style I had at the very start of my illustration career many years ago! Click here to read an earlier post on this subject.

My process for creating most of these new images is that I actually start out just doodling (ink on paper) random faces and figures... then when one captures my attention, I see it through by completing the doodle of the character fully. Because it is a doodle, without any pre-planning or light under sketch... it is spontaneously drawn and mistakes occur. For example, I might be drawing a hand, and make an error...so I will just drawn another hand, and then another until I get it right. Once the various elements of the doodle are done, I scan everything into Photoshop and then "correct" my mistakes within the doodle. By resizing parts, erasing parts, repositioning elements, taking out a poorly drawn hand or face and replacing it with another hand or face I had drawn successfully, etc... Once the image is finally composed, I then create additional layers with painted textures done with gouache to add atmosphere and setting to the image, as well as add digital color.

above- the original ink doodle drawing of the boy character (on right side)

above- additional ink drawings, of the imp character and the dog

Posted above (top) is the raw doodle I recently created while I was watching TV. Initially I started drawing a female character (the larger character on the left with the outstretched arm) but it was so terrible that I quickly abandoned it and then began the doodle of the unusual boy character with the odd hairstyle (on the right side) holding the tea cup. You can see that I made a mess of his hand holding the tea cup, so I repeated creating his hand, and the better version can be seen just above the female character's head. Once I had finished drawing the boy character, I started imagining who he was... and so drew a mansion as if it were his family home (far left). I even scribbled in his name: Filbert Hieronymus Mann, and imagined he was the son of a wealthy and eccentric inventor. I then scanned this raw doodle into Photoshop to begin the process as described at the top.

above- the final image... that is until I then wanted to add more elements

above- the final image... with the imp and dog characters added

Posted above (top) is the finished art image... having added in the background texture and the additional digital color. The large trees on the left side were actually line art I had already created for an assignment, and felt they would work well for this spontaneous image as well, so I brought them into the Photoshop layers and reworked them a bit. I liked the final result... 

(above bottom) But after setting with the "completed" image for awhile, I then decided it needed more embellishment, to give it a deeper feeling of a real story behind the image. So I then added stronger shadow to the tree area, added the suggestion of clouds at the top of the sky... as well as modifying the size of some of the background row trees. Then I inserted additional drawings I had created of an imp character, a majestic Great Dane type dog, a tea pot, and a kind of blunderbuss gun. I scanned all these additional drawings into the layered image, tweaking their size and position until they fit into the scene perfectly. 

It is such an interesting image, that I am tempted to begin writing a story around it...

Visit the NEW STUFF portfolio section on stevensalerno.com to view many more of my new images.

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.)

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 Times, The 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

Summer Reading (suggested by The Chicago Tribune)

I had worked on projects for art director David Syrek so long ago that when he called recently to work with him on a new assignment for the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine... it took a while for the memories to kick in, but even still, neither one of us could quite recall exactly what we had worked on together in the past.

However, once this new assignment (for an article in the literary section containing their summer book picks) was under way, what I was quick to remember was the professional and easy manner in which David operates as an AD. (I had recently sent him some samples of my "new style" illustrations which is what had made him think of me for this particular assignment. He had liked an image of mine depicting a man reading a newspaper, and he especially liked that I had used a monochromatic color scheme...) During our initial phone conversation about this current project, we quickly arrived at what the image in general should be, and he wanted me to create this new illustration also with a monochromatic palette, similar to the sample of mine he'd cited.

As with any daily newspaper assignments, there is little time... I doodled out a preliminary rough sketch depicting various people outside, all reading books, purposely giving it a turn-of-the-last-century feel, mostly due to how I drew the sailboat in the background. This rough sketch was created with pencil and pen. 

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The above sketch became the starting point for the next stage "final" sketch, which is the version I showed to David for his comments. I added in the "buff" color for the background, and as you can see altered the poses and positions of the characters. This sketch was created with pencil and pen, with the background color being a scan of a colored paper then added into the sketch via Photoshop. The only comments David had were that he wanted the scene to be more "park like" rather than the countryside, for me to make the lake seem vast, and to add in someone riding a bicycle. No problem...

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Below is the final completed art, created with fountain pen (which has non-permanent ink that I can smear with my finger as I draw the image) on paper. I made all the modifications David had suggested. I also brightened the background buff color a bit, added slight tone to the trees and characters, as well as added limited blue in the lake and white in the clouds and in the character's shirts, too. The idea was, despite the image being busy with so many characters, to keep it feeling as light and airy as possible, which was accomplished by letting the line work alone define all the forms, and keeping the color minimal -rather than fill in all the forms with multiple colors.

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This last view (below) is of an alternate version of the final art that I also supplied to David, which uses a different background color. Instead of the background being a scan of a buff color paper, with this version I used a scan of a deeper toned paper that has actual bits of real leaves embedded right into the paper. I am not sure which of the two "final art" images that was used for their "Summer Reading" article, but I prefer the version with the bits of leaves as part of the background. I think the overall richer tones give the illustration more feeling and visual punch.

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Shown below is a detail view of the foreground character of a bearded man sitting in a wooded chair. If you look closely at the line work defining the character, the chair, the lamp post, the tree, etc... you can see where I smear and smudge the line with my finger as I draw it with my pen. This effect kind of looks like a "burr" in a traditional drypoint etching. During the sketch stage I had asked if I should included a Kindle, or an iPad among all the paper books... I think the idea of also showing the new technology in the scene was nixed because if I had included them, it, at a glance, makes the image seem as if the article might be about new technology, rather than just being about the act of reading itself.

Visit my web site stevensalerno.com to see all my various illustration portfolio samples... and make sure to view my KIDS' BOOKS, FEATURED BOOK, and the NEW STUFF categories!

Maurice Sendak 1928 - 2012

I was saddened to read this morning that famed author/illustrator Maurice Sendak had died.

As an art student many years ago at Parsons School of Design in New York City, I was among the fortunate few students who were able to have Maurice as an instructor in his children's picture book class, as he only taught there for a few years. He was one of my favorite instructors...

I remember him always encouraging the rebel within, to be honest with your expression, and avoid being safe. As a student in his class I marveled at his entertaining humor punctuated by the point blank criticisms yet delivered with warmth and total encouragement for us to be our best... I think in part because he knew some of us were going to attempt to follow in his footsteps and he wanted us to succeed in what is a very difficult industry. He was a brilliant writer/artist and the numerous things I learned from him helped me to develop my own career as a writer and illustrator of children's picture books. 

He was an original voice that will be missed, but thankfully children (and adults) will be able to discover his books for many generations to come. 

A handful of years ago when his picture book BRUNDIBAR was released, I met him again when he was doing a book signing at a Barnes & Noble here in the city... He remembered me from his class all those years ago. We chatted a bit about things and then he signed my copy of his book. What a thrill!

visit stevensalerno.com to view samples of his illustration work... and click on the kids' books section to see his picture books for children.