Portfolio of Illustrator Eddy Crosby

Here’s this weeks Illustration Friday submission. Topic is Muddy.

These girls were inspired by the look of Sixties singers like Helen Shapiro, Ronnie Spector and Dusty Springfield.
Medium: PITT oil based pencil and watercolours/acrylics on 230gsm watercolour paper

These are my rough development sketches. First I drew the basic pose (left) then on detail paper refined and stylised it further (right).

Method: After I was happy with my refined sketch I transferred it via light box onto watercolour paper using blue Col Erase pencil. Went over the blue line with a Pitt oil based pencil (extra soft). They work well on watercolour paper. Painted using W&N watercolours (pan set) with a little opaque acrylic on the dress, shoes and the gloves.

Characters showing anxiety and anger.

These are some development sketches for the school diary assignment.
Medium: A3 Detail paper, pencil, PITT artist pen, Pentel brush pen

Createl Publishing are a publisher of student and teacher diaries for Australian schools. In November I was commissioned to illustrate their new student homework diary for 2011.

The brief stated “The diary requires 50 small cartoons to illustrate different study tips. The cartoons should appeal to ages 13-17 approx. and feature both male and
female figures. The purchaser of the diaries will be schools so the cartoons have to walk a fine line between beinq contemporary and still appropriate for schools.”

Here are some of the final designs. The printed size of the artwork is appox. 20mm by 20mm. Since that’s pretty small I decided to create them as vector art, keeping the shapes simple and avoiding black outlines. As usual I began sketching out these characters on paper and then recreated them in Illustrator. I will post some of the initial sketches and roughs soon.

A few female characters I drew in my sketchbook over Christmas.

A few sketches I did today. I am trying to work out a pleasing eye shape and went for the almond or tear drop look.

These sketches are on rough watercolour paper. First, I lightly roughed out the designs with col-erase blue pencil then went over with a darker lead pencil. I deliberately kept the line work bold and stylised.

Here are two of those drawings painted and coloured in Photoshop.

Here’s a few drawings of Princess Leia from my sketchbook. I usually begin by roughing out the figure with blue Col-erase blue pencil . I do this very lightly. Erasing heavy Col-erase marks leaves a waxy residue on the paper that’s hard to draw over.

Once I am happy with the lines I go over them with an HB pencil. Most of the drawings here have been inked with a sable brush. The one of her standing with arms folded was sort of inspired by the inking style of Darwyn Cooke.

This one was sketched out with a Faber Castell Tri-grip colour pencil which gives a nice deep black. Scanned it in at 24 bit colour RGB, 600 ppi. In Photoshop I adjusted levels, cleaned it up and placed the line work on transparent layer. Then reduced it to 300ppi.

I usually add colour with adjustments layers and masks but this time I painted directly on transparent layers. I was inspired by some Photoshop painting tutorials by illustrator Chris Oatley. I also used a set of his brushes that can be downloaded from his site. You can get them here.