First, I receive some details about what the client would like to have done (sometimes vague and open, other times rather specific). In this case things started out general and quickly moved to the specific direction. Confused? Just wait ... it will all make sense soon enough.
The project was a cover (front and back) for Colleagues, a magazine put out by the college I attended. They send it out to several different schools. If you are familiar with my normal/preferred types of illustrations then you may be wondering how this all fits together. Well, it doesn't really ... I don't always have the ability to work with strange and obscured subjects and ideas when the client/project calls for something much more 'normal'.
Anyway, when I first talked with them things were pretty vague. The issue was called 'Service Learning' and they were looking for something that would have a tie in with what the students were learning in school and their community work/service. So in my initial sketches/brainstorming I was just working on ways to connect these two scenes in a clear way.
I tried having a painting on the wall of the environment which was the same as what they were working in on the front cover, having the same kid in each scene in the same general pose/gesture in the scenes to show their connection, , etc ... I had the students repainting a wall, cleaning up a lake, and raking leaves for their different service activities.At this time I talked to the client again, and he said that he liked the idea of the two different scenes blending together and had a very specific story that he now wanted me to illustrate. There were some students who learned about graphing and things in class and then went out to the lake/beach to clean up garbage and graphed/mapped out the density of where the most garbage was ... this was then used to help decide where they were adding trash receptacles, etc ...
This was my initial, more refined sketch/layout for this new story which they wanted to have told. At this point I attempted to contact them once again for more feedback but did not receive any response for a couple days. It was then to a point where the illustration had to be finished in a couple days so I just went ahead and moved on to a final drawing because there was no time.
Before I finished the final pencil drawing I changed the classroom scene on the left. I got some feedback from my brother who happens to be a teacher and he said what I had before was very old fashioned. And having the kids sitting on the floor with the teacher would be a much more contemporary teaching style. This also helped the two scenes work better together since they were crouching/sitting on the ground in each scene and was much more interactive than the previous layout. Since this is a teaching magazine I certainly thought having a more contemporary teaching method displayed would be much more appropriate.
I went ahead and colored the image in my normal/preferred type of palette. Very washed out and dark looking ... like old photographs.
This is probably still my personal favorite version of the illustration. However, the client was not satisfied with it and said that he thought it was too dark, and wanted me to brighten things up, maybe change the kid in the foregrounds shirt to something more vibrant.So, I did.
The image overall was brightened up and the kids shirt was made into a brighter orange color. However, this was still not good enough. He said that the image felt too much like fall colors. The oranges, browns and greens were more fall colors and he wanted it to have a more spring/summer. I was a bit disheartened at this point because this meant that I would probably have to recolor the image since adjusting what I already had probably wouldn't work too well.
I did try and edit the colors some more though. Less work is always nice if you can get it to work. haha
As you can see I didn't get too far with this. I brightened up the white shirt of the boy and the green shirt of the girl and lightened up the background some more but it just was not working ... it was clear that I was going to have to recolor the image since I now knew that they wanted a spring/summer feel. I was a bit nervous about this since I tend to use the really washed out, old color palette which is not summery at all. However, go big or go home. If you are gonna go with bright colors then you should make it look like you meant it and not like you just edited it after you found out they wanted things changed up.
I then submitted this version, they loved it, and so the illustration was finally complete. I am certainly not going to be running out and using bright colors in all of my illustrations any time soon, but it never hurts to try something different. Bright colors are still not really 'my thing'.
Hopefully people will find this informative or interesting because it took a bit of time to type it out and organize it.
- Later Days -
