the making of an illustration
TRANSCRIPT
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The Making of an Illustration
(by Betsy Streeter)
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I thought it would be fun to document an illustration from beginning to end, sketches, interruptions and all… I’ve never done that before.
So here goes…
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Each year I do a drawing for the holidays, with a simple (often one-word) theme.I knew my theme this year would be “Believe,” because I think we’ll need to do a whole lot of believing in the next year, what with the state of the world and all…
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I also had this cool little robot dude I had sketched a while back.
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In the middle of the night, I thought of the concept of a “snowbot.”So I wrote that down. In the dark. I do this a lot.That’s my nightstand, and yes, that’s Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” there too.As you can see my handwriting is pretty iffy when I can’t see what I’m doing, but in the morning I get it sorted out.
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Later that day I roughed out a concept on my To Do list.(Any piece of paper is fair game.)
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(Okay insert intermission here for various random working mom activities like picking up kids, answering the phone, boiling pasta,
stuff like that)
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The next morning, I did a better sketch there on the nightstand.I often do these things best right when I first wake up.
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Next it was time to lay out the drawing on a proper piece of paper…In the right size and shape,So it would work on a card…And also fit on the scanner.
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In the initial drawing, the Snowbot looks pretty much like a large Ipp with CDs for eyes.I wasn’t totally thrilled with that.You can see a lot of erasing was going on.
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(Insert another intermission here where I went to look at lots of robots online.)
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I made the Snowbot more feminine, like a proper dance partner for the robot.
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Next came getting the line drawing nailed down, eliminating the noise…
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… and then putting in shading and texture.This is where the drawing really comes to life. I just love this part of the process.
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Finally, I added a bit of color to link together the Snowbot, the Robot, the Dog and the word “Believe...”
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(You can see on the left side there where I got frustrated with my pencil because it wasn’t smooth
so I scribbled it around some.)
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… and this is what the final drawing looks like, all scanned and everything.
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That’s it – thanks for reading!And… All the Best in the coming year! -Betsy