Steve and Sara, my editor and art director at Dutton, asked me to create the cover image last, after the interior illustrations were finished. After I submitted the interior art, Jason, the book designer, worked up a cover composition using two scanned interior paintings. He combined them into one image using Photoshop. That image couldn't be used as final art because the background wasn't completely accurate, so I worked up a new sketch based upon his comp.
Jason then laid out my sketch with text to give me an idea how the final book would look.
Once approved, I transferred my sketch to watercolor paper. Then I painted the entire image in grey tones using Paynes Grey watercolor. Then I fixed the surface with two coats of acrylic matte medium. If I use this technique again on a future project, I'll use warmer colors for the base painting. Paynes Grey is too blue.
For Ron, I used my son and a friend of his as reference. But mostly, I used myself, a large mirror and my digital camera.
Here, I began by painting the sky with opaque paint, though I did layer on darker transparent blues later.
I painted the buildings and Ron's face one transparent layer at a time, with oil paint thinned down generously with Liquin — taking about 24-hours for each layer to dry before I could continue. It was a very slow, tedious process, one I'm not sure I'll repeat in the future.
In the shadow areas of Ron's face, I used transparent browns and blues. Then I began to introduce opaque colors, especially in the highlights. Once the shadow areas had dried, I added a touch of cool purples and blues, for no reason at all, I just like purples.
This style is somewhat realistic, yet stylized enough to offer some grace where my realism is off. The thing I do like about this technique is how translucent, or as I've heard it described elsewhere, almost "jewel-like." It has a three dimensional quality because, to some degree, it is three dimensional.
The last thing I did, which is not pictured here, was to subdue the highlights. I felt they were a bit too strong, especially on Ron's nose. If I had time, and I wish I'd thought of this before, I'd have added some people in the background walking along the sidewalk.
4 comments:
Thanks for sharing your process Don. There really is so much depth in your color, "jewel-like" is a great description. This technique is working very well for you. Too bad it feels slow and tedious. (Although that doesn't show in the finished piece!) But I know what you mean, I tend to leans towards slow and tedious too, but in the end I thinks all those layers are worth it.
gail
Wow! I love to the see the process. Thanks for sharing:)
Ciao,
joe y elio
Yes, thanks very much for sharing the process. I love to read stuff like this!
Great cover! One note of caution though about using transparent layers-- they can play havoc with the scanner, depending on the medium you're using. I've been warned by an art director that the scanner may pick up mainly the top layer. I illustrated a book with oil glazes and found a few trouble spots on the proofs, altho it was mostly due to surface glare. You probably won't run into that with acrylics.
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