As a rule everything starts with a pencil sketch and develops from there but it's easy to find yourself repeating familiar patterns. As an exercise in breaking new ground, this image started by composing simple shapes, working in greyscale to establish tonal values. Once I had a composition I was happy with I then added colours and texture. Trying out different hues and saturation values until the whole felt balanced.
Kevin at Deloitte Services LP got in touch with a request for a cover image depicting a kind of digital spiderweb. Reflecting a story about how manufacturing companies are looking to utilise digital supply networks.
As there was a concept of sorts already in place it was then a question of how best to realise the image. The sketch (below) was approved but there was a subsequent request for a tighter draft and indication of colour before final approval. Usually colour evolves during the process of working up an illustration and often is not resolved until the very end. For that reason I rarely commit to colour roughs. In this case though, for what is a very graphic image, I knew upfront how the colours would pan out so I was able to provide a very accurate impression.
Dallas Magazine got in touch requesting an image for an article about doubling the cancer survival rates for diseased kidneys. The copy discusses various methods of targeting the affected organ.
I had a request from Kathi at Guideposts to illustrate a spread about the recollections of folk who have had near death experiences. While each account is unique, those who cross over go through similar stages - even across cultures and faiths.
Not a consciously made illustration but something that more or less grew out of idle drawing. I can only conclude it's some kind of reaction to listening to too many news broadcasts - it's been a terrible year across the world, dark forces gaining ground.
Faces, portraits, head and shoulders are endlessly compelling but don't crop up too often as subject matter for the commissioned works I receive, so I tend to work on them in my own time. There is so much scope in the abstracting of shapes and features while still retaining the sense of a character. This imagined portrait image developed from a simple pencil outline of a face and evolved into a more mask-like interpretation with echoes of an actor on stage.
The Wall Street Journal got in touch requesting an illustration for their health section about the rising costs of healthcare and how those costs are being hidden. This was the finished illustration selected from a couple of sketched concepts.
Perhaps there is nothing that affects the mood of an image more than colour. I was taught to 'use colour sparingly and only for a special purpose'. It is a maxim that has somehow stuck with me over the years despite it being rendered redundant at the merest glance at any period of art history or indeed contemporary illustration. Nevertheless I do tend to work with a restricted range of colours. This is a little graphic experiment I worked up running a simple image through different colourways to see just how differently it could be perceived.
