The story involves the months of the year gathering to tell each other stories. Since it is October's month, he is presiding, but Gaiman gives the remaining months intriguing and unique characteristics. Above is an illustration of May, who bears a slight resemblance to Desire from Gaiman's 'Sandman' comics. The description of the character in 'October' matched Desire fairly well, so I wasn't afraid of the influence.
From here I took a sheet of layout bond paper, and working over the inks, I created layers of tones using the Copic markers. I was using a combination of cool gray, neutral gray, and warm gray.
Now let's see this with another spot illustration, this time for June (who I loosely based on one of my former grad school colleagues). June is described as a little shy, and fearful of the woods, hence the overpowering nature of the environment.
Here's the tone layer, prior to duotone shading.
And here's the final June image. I narrowed the image to give more emphasis on the trees, and to draw the eye to June a little more.
Hope you enjoyed the process breakdown! There will be more of these down the road.
3 comments:
Great drawings, and I love reading about other people's techniques. The results are fantastic.
I say go for it. You have awesome control when it comes to your b/w only work, but I have to say I really like it when you let color sneak in. Like with your Toby & Sara covers.
p.s. spot on, on the former colleague. I knew right when I scrolled down before I started reading about your process. Has she seen it yet?
Its good to see other artists work flow, I'll have to do the same with my Illustrations.
Cheers.
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