ART219 Illustration

Brochure Illustrations for Red Barn

You are producing two line art and color illustrations for a Red Barn promotional pamphlet. One will be used on the cover and the other on the inside spread of an 8.5 x 11 trifold pamphlet. This is a four color print job. Go to Red Barn this weekend for inspiration and to shoot photographic reference for this project. For the two illustrations you as a freelance illustrator are being paid $1000.00. How much time do you have to accomplish two approveable illustrations. What is your hourly rate? Figure it up and that is how much time you have to do this project. This is an Arts organization, so the artwork you produce has to be really good. Can you do it?

Another Big Watercolor Opportunity

Another big watercolor due on Friday. Another wonderful change to watercolor. If one looks bad, do two. If two looks bad... third time is charm. Topic is you choice. We will see what they look like tomorrow.

Client (me) approves on Weds.

So for Weds., we are looking at .pdfs of your lineart/color poster illustrations in your poster design. This could either be me approving it as an art director or as a client. We will see if there are any that I think are at a high degree of execution, technique and concept. You need to look at what you have produced and ask yourself if it is approveable. If not... what should you do? Hang your head in shame, appologize for being so lame or be proactive and redo it until you are confident it is approveable. It is up to you. Your future in the profession depends upon you nailing this. Good guilt trip?

Also we will be looking at your larger (13 x 19) scaled up watercolor. Did scale help, hurt or just annoy? Make sure you are blogging. I'm going to be checking the blog on Tuesday and Wedsday to assign your early progress report Blackboard/banner. Get some images for me to look at so I can be oh so judgemental.

Pickings from the blogs

I'm posting some of the self-portraits that I think are excellent demonstration of the line/wash, wash, wash/line techiques we have been working on for the last couple of weeks. Although everyone was working with the same base technique, you can see the variety of style and emphasis in the way the line/wash techinque was applied in each of the examples. Good job. You get a smiley face and gold star.

Danielle Hill

Rebecca Fels

Julianne Gross

Rebeka Hernandez

 

Scaling it up

OK. Like how I start the posts with OK. Sorry. I'll stop. The next project is to push technique with watercolor to a larger size. So far it has been small little watercolors. This time work on a 13 x 19, watercolor only. Let's see if scale is a factor in what you can do with your growing technique. Roughly, a watercolor of this size will take 4 or 5 hours. Topic/subject is your choice. Get several pieces of paper or cold-press illustration board and don't be afraid to start over if you screw it up. The more you do, the better you get. Remember, there is always color in a white goat.

Poster Illustration redux

OK. Looks like everybody (mostly) have ideas as to what their poster illustration will be and how it will be used in the final design. There was a range of exactly how detailed the plans were, but as this mythical Art Director, I have approved the intitial idea comps for final development. Now as the designer/illustrator, you need to execute the illustration and lay it out in the poster design with the headline and pertinent copy. We will look at the designs and illustrations on Monday. Just make a pdf that we can look at on the projector. This would be an approval point for the artwork before it goes to the client for final approval before printing. I will have my Art Director hat on for this review. Keep an eye on how much time this project is taking. We will see if you are costing or making me some money on the back end.

Poster illustration

OK. This is the project I assigned today. Find a campus related event/group/something that needs promotion. You will be developing a line/color illustration for this event/group. The final poster size is 13 x 19. You need to figure out what is needed illustration-wise for the poster. You can work with photo reference if that is the appropriate imagery needed. Essentially, the imagery is wide open depending upon the concept for the poster. Figure out how much space is needed for the illustration in the poster design. Many variables to consider with this project. These variables need to be identified and figured out prior to committing time to the artwork. We will look at initial sketches of what you are doing with the illustration on Weds.

Self-portrait web profile illustration

Sorry, this is the late post for the self-portrait web profile illustration.

4 hours to complete an approveable illustration for use as a web profile image. Technique is open to whatever variation/combination of the line/color techniques we have worked on in class so far.

 

Still messing around with technique

So, for Friday we are looking at 5 line/wash illustrations of the same image. The only thing that changes is the way you execute the artwork. This is simply varying your use of the technique and emphasis of line and wash. Also, I want 5 digital illustrations (topic open) of line and color on/in computer/photoshop. Again, these exercises are simply to develop an understanding of the range of media options and technique before we get into actually trying to solve visual illustration problems. Post the 5 digital pieces on your blogs so we can get to them to look at on Friday.

Line, wash... Wash, line

For Weds... 10 more 5 x 7 exercises. 5 are line art first then color wash second, then 5 color wash first, line art second. Combining color washes with line art is a quick and typically effective technique that graphic designers use for producing cost-effective artwork used in their designs. This exercise explores two traditional variations of combining color washes with structural line. Each has a job to do in the success of the artwork. Topic is open.

Bring your supplies to watercolor and draw during class. We will be upsizing to 8 x 10 one of the ten exercises. It will get better. Keep trying different things. No hidden expectations in this post. Do you now feel cheated?