Illustration Friday: Parade

This week I included the original pencil sketch—most of my stuff starts out as some type of pencil sketch—sometimes vague geometric shapes that only make sense to me. Other times the sketches are detailed like the one with this entry.



I take the pencil sketch into one of four apps (Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash) depending on what I want the final piece to look like and trace over it. More often than not, I will modify the final from the sketch as I go.



This is the AI art board with the layers pallet opened up showing the number of layers this screen. I like to keep each element (eyes, head, hair, body) on it’s own layer and then grouped by major element (skateboarder, girl, balloon boy) in a super layer. (Click for larger image)



And finally, the completed version. For the record, I did the pencil sketch with a .5mm Techniclick II mechanical pencil in a Moleskine notebook. The final version was created in Adobe Illustrator CS.

Your comments are encouraged.