Illustrating

It wasn't that long ago I fell in love with drawing again. I hadn't drawn since high school classes, and I never really thought about creating art for anything until I joined a video games company a few years back. Video games are an incredible source of inspiration - it's art meets music meets story-telling, and all of that with talent peeling from the walls. It was an inspirational place to be. I loved it so much I decided that I wanted to learn learn learn. That lead to countless mornings going over tutorials (Aaron Blaise's online courses...incredible) and trying to figure out the basics.

This was my first illustration. I drew it on paper, scanned it into my computer, and used the vector pen tool in photoshop to build the shapes, color them, and then use a mouse to paint the shadows!

Time for Tea in Mummsley-Heath

A continuous effort of pencil to paper helped me develop a style, still, the drawings had lots of room for improvement of course, but I had began to refine the technique I was using (which was completely inefficient, but the best way to colorize through photoshop at the time - no tablet/pen yet!) This image idea would be re-visited a couple of years later.

At this point, I had drawn and colored in a lot of images, some had gone up on my little daughter's walls, some had be resigned to the archives never to be seen by anyone. But you keep going. And I had the bug, so I was loving keeping on keeping on.

This illustration suddenly made me realize the beauty of lighting. This was the first one that I really enjoyed thinking about the dimension of shadows. It was still drawing>scanning>vector shaping>mouse brushing, but I suddenly realized the possibilities and drama of lighting.

Then I got a Cintiq tablet and pen. And that's when I put in the hours.

Mimi and the Whale

I started working in the mornings on refining my techniques, and again, learning from Aaron Blaise on his YouTube channel. I purchased some of his classes - and I can honestly say that was the best thing I could've done. Aaron Blaise's tutorials are incredible, they are calming, inspiring, and they reshaped my entire methodology.

A Cold Journey

I was learning more about how different brushes play different roles, and had so much fun building lots of different types of images, all with a similar methodology.

Saving Polar Bear

An Important Meeting

I kept developing my techniques, building out color ideas, composition ideas, pushing what I thought was standard composition rules; some made it to the save button, some didn't. That was totally fine with me. The main thing was building out different compositions with alternate lighting techniques, with the hope of evoking and capturing imagination. Ultimately wanting to tell stories through an image. These images were all created in the dead of night, while the lights were off, and people were sound asleep. I had become my time, my moment to explore, invent, and define my style.

In the Zone

Composition is always a big part of the story - allowing your eyes to feel. I love diving into those things, especially when there's so much value to be had from these learnings. Thank you again Aaron Blaise for making art development accessible and inspiring for us all!

A Comedy at Tea