One of our fun projects for this year was a series of mazes to be used in a Mazes Mats book for Publications International. Geared for children 4 and up, Larry Jones illustrated mazes that were kids placemats for fun on the run! Designed as easy-tear pages, kids could use them as “boredom busters” to take anywhere – in the car, to a restaurant or waiting room – wherever they choose! Here are a few of the mazes that Larry created.
When talking to clients about my work as an illustrator, one of the most frequently asked questions is how I go about painting assignments digitally. So here is a step by step procedural, taking a painting from initial drawing to fully rendered, final art.
Santa Claus has been a frequent illustration subject over the years and I have several different treatments of Santa figures drawn up in my sketchbook. I chose one of those to use as the basis for this demo.
Nearly all of my work begins with a traditional pencil on paper drawing. The drawing gets scanned into my system and opened in Photoshop, where it can be cleaned up and adjusted. I like to work on a toned background, so I import a favorite backdrop and use it as a base layer. The drawing layer, now floating above the Background, is changed to a Multiply layer style, made to look like a sepia ink drawing, and the opacity is lowered to 50%.
I move the art to Painter, which I like to use for it’s natural look and feel. I create a new layer, between the canvas pencil layers, and paint in some basic values with an airbrush tool. A background is created to give Santa an environment to stand in.
On another new layer, I begin to lay in local color. I like Painter’s Chalk and Pastel brush categories and use them often, here with Flat Cover on basic paper settings, to give a firmer edge. I like to work over the entire painting at the same time, moving between background and foreground.
Color block-in continues. I want some texture in the illustration, so I use Painter’s Square Chalk brush variant with a heavily textured paper setting on the walls. The drawing remains the top layer acting as a blueprint to keep everything on track.
When the basics are laid down I begin to refine the painting, adding color and rendering form. The moon is added outside the window as a source for some rim light on Santa.
At this point I am far enough along that I can collapse most of the layers into one. I always make a duplicate of the drawing layer first, in case I need to use it as a reference point later on. I usually work with as few layers as practical. This allows the painting tools to interact in a much more natural, traditional media, way.
A view of trees and snow outside gives Santa a winter setting, and the diamond pattern adds an Old World look to the window.
All that’s left now are a few details. Santa gets some overstuffed pockets, the wall gets a trim board, a bit of flash here and there, some minor tweaks, and the painting is complete.
Peter Lacalamita has been a digital illustrator for many years and recently he has been creating 3D animations for broadcast TV and interactive games for the iPhone and iPad. He launched Adam’s Amazing Dream with a gifted writer, Nancy Morency, and created all the art and coded the app with the game engine Unity3D. Peter also creates apps for clients and is near completion of several apps that feature ferocious dinosaurs!
Adam’s Amazing Dream is based on the true story of a little boy that “sees” incredible things in his dreams. This unique story is sure to give you chills and re-inforce your beliefs in something beyond our world. It will give you an opportunity to discuss angels and the importance of dreams with your little one while enjoying Adam’s interactive pop-up world. In this first story of a future series, we meet Adam. He is a happy, expressive little boy that tells us about his guardian angel, Uncle Bono, who takes him to fun places, when he is sleeping. But this time, it isn’t Uncle Bono who visits him in his dreams, it is someone new…and Adam can’t wait to tell his parents about it! Take advantage of this wonderful, new way to enjoy a story with your child. Children can choose to read the story themselves, or have it read to them by the author. They will be captivated by the story, the characters and all of the fun interactive animation. Geared towards children 3-5 years of age. View the app in the iTunes Store.
In the beginning of 2011 Peter Grosshauser was asked by Project WET to create artwork for a website they were building. Project WET (Water Education for Teachers) is based in Bozeman, MT and they provide educational materials all over the world concerning water and water use. Peter has been working for them for many years and they wanted the artwork to reflect the same style he used to illustrate nearly 50 kids books for them previously. The assignment was to create an interactive, animated web game that would be fun for children. Basically Peter’s job was to create all the frames, borders, and all the different elements that were involved in each subtopic and game. Each character illustrated had to be in different layers (different layers for arms, legs, tails, etc…) for animation purposes.
His favorite part of this project was creating the home page globe with all the different elements on different layers which spin at different speeds. The Blue Traveler game was also fun to create. Peter worked with Big Bad Tomato out of Los Angeles for this section of the web site. All illustrations were created in Painter and Photoshop while listening to many hours of the Ricky Gervais podcasts! View this fun site at – http://www.discoverwater.org/
Welcome to our new and improved website! We offer an exciting group of award winning illustrators that can provide you with just about any style of illustration you desire. One of the new features we have added gives you a short description of each artist’s expertise and how their work is created. Click on the Artist Portfolios in the black bar to see image thumbnails of each illustrator in our group – click on the artist image and you will be directed to their portfolio and any blogs that are posted about recent projects. You can also click on any of the tags to direct you to areas and subject matter that interests you. Powered by the WordPress platform we can now blog about projects that we have created for clients and show how an individual illustration is created. Feel free to leave comments – we like to hear from you! And…check back regularly to see new blog postings!
George has been providing award winning conceptual art for years for the advertising, corporate, and editorial markets. He is extremely conceptual in coming up with ideas to solve the needs of clients. His illustrations are created digitally in Photoshop and at times creates acrylic paintings on canvas that are converted into Photoshop files.
Phil works in all traditional media, with acrylic and watercolor in conjunction with airbrush. His specialties are cartoon character design and scientific and nature illustration. His favorites are dinosaur art and Disney illustration. He has illustrated over 70 children’s books and his versatility has produced stunning art in all areas – advertising, puzzles, collector art plates, magazines, television, motion pictures, and more.
Garry has produced numerous product illustration. logos, and character designs for various advertising agencies and an array of colorful illustrations for the educational publishing markets. From textbooks, to mazes, to puzzles, to book covers, his digital stye always has a fun, kid friendly look. His programs of choice are Illustrator and Photoshop.
John creates artwork for advertising, editorial, and publishing clients using a variety of traditional and digital media. Completed assignments range from point of purchase displays, magazine ads, board games, children’s books, ebooks etc. Many of his projects involve painting people in a representative style, along with animals/dinosaur art using both a realistic and anthropomorphic approach. He paints regularly with traditional methods, mixed media/acrylic on board, but most illustration projects are painted digitally using Photoshop and Corel Painter.
Peter’s wild and humorous digital illustrations are created in Painter, Illustrator, and Photoshop. His area of expertise is the children’s market where he has illustrated numerous children’s books and products including extensive work in elementary textbooks. He has created games, mazes, doodle books for kids, comic strips, and web site art to name a few. Kids just love his art!!
