So a couple of weeks back we all got asked as a course if we wanted to pitch ideas to the Guardian for some editorial illustrations to go in a college article (the answer was yes, yes we did)
I actually had a particular interest in the brief because I'm becoming increasingly interested in editorial illustration as a field - so the chance to get some work into a newspaper at this stage of the course would've been awesome (spoiler alert - I didn't win, but this is a process of the work I did anyway!)
The three article header's we were given were -
- Creating a perfect portfolio
- Careers in the arts and creative industries
- The revival of crafts and analogue methods in a world of digital advancements
I did a load of different sketches and approaches in thumbs, just fleshing out ideas. I got a rough colour scheme (I was really keen on a cyan/yellow/magenta look) but also started picking out some other more mute brights that'd go with it (like a nice minty green and a light purple)
This was one of my initial 'final' ideas - fully digitised. I tried to keep it as stripped back and clean as possible, but I wasn't too keen on the outcome - it definitely doesn't look bad, but I think compositionally it doesn't have the impact I initially wanted it to have and the digital flats just look a bit…flat. Even with the extra bits of detail.
I was also thinking about how the colours would look printed on newsprint, which has a slightly duller tone to it anyway. I think this is okay for a screen-based image but probably wouldn't be as good in print, which lead me to start playing around with it analogously instead.
Here's a selection of my analogous messing about. I was playing around with a lot of inks, watercolours, and coloured pencils to try and get a sort of aesthetic that I liked. I had an alternate idea for something that was more diagrammatic and panel-like, which I showed to matt and teresa (and they both liked!) but both of them said I had to be wary of too many words used in editorials. I was thinking mostly of Jillian Tamaki's editorial illustrations, which I know have been in the guardian before:
But yeah. I thought that the diagram-esque idea would have been cool if I could've come up with some fun and witty headings to go with it, but I also thought it was a little bit too 'obvious' - which we'd also being warded away from doing. Matt also mentioned that I should try and push the silliness and the character-aspect of my work as much as possible, because its the sort of thing that makes the work I do unique.
Here's further sketches - probably a lot more like the sort of thing I'd do. Me and a few others agreed a guy hi-fiving a portfolio seemed a lot more like a 'perfect portfolio' than a guy punching it. I'm a big fan of the way people like Jack Teagle do their lines, and I thought that it would be a suitable way to recreate the pencil of my thumbnails whilst still refining it enough for a finished piece:
These were drawn on cartridge (to makes sure there was as little pen bleed as possible) and then scanned in to work on in photoshop. Heres the end result:
I actually wrestled with the colours for these quite a bit. I wanted them to look flat and bold - whilst still having enough detailing to keep them interesting.
Theres definite improvement for these - and I definately can spot some things on them that i'd continue to fix had I had the time, like more line-cleaning here and there. But even though they didn't get chosen, I'm really proud of how they've turned out and I think the time I spent wrestling with them to get them as good as I could possibly get them has really paid off.
I think this combination of digital-analogue working is actually a really good idea for my practice too, and something i'm probably going to keep doing. This brief has also been a good basis for my Weekly Editorial brief that I've since chosen to do for Extended Practice.
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