Over the past month I have completed a few illustrations for Copeland Publishing’s parenting magazines (Melbourne Child, Sydney Child). This is a one of two illustrations for an article entitled ‘The Tyranny of Distance’ for the April 2010 issue.
In it a mum writes about how her three year old daughter connects with her young cousins who visit briefly from Italy.
Many of the magazine’s illustrations are in a cartoon style but for this one the editor Sean wanted to go for a more naturalistic, concept-based approach.
I decided to focus on the girl and show her in a reflective mood maybe thinking about her cousins who had just left on their long trip back home
I have roughly outlined my process below from thumbnails to final art.
The completed illustration.
My final pencil drawing that i scanned in at 600 ppi and then reduced to 300 ppi. I cleaned it up a bit in Photoshop and it was all ready to colour.
My final rough sketches. I was getting closer to the want I wanted with the one on the right. A sort of combination of my reference photos.
More developed roughs. A bit too close to my photo reference (left) so I went for a more impressionistic look (right).
Early sketches working from my reference.
This photo of a girl with her reflection was my main inspiration. Love the wistful contemplative expression. I wanted to get a similar feeling in the drawing. Photo reference from Flickr.
Thumbnails showing various compositions. Originally thought of including the Mother.
Sorry for the delay in updating but I was plagued with some major computer problems. Anyway it was finally resolved this week by having a new hard drive installed in my iMac. Everything working well now.
