Hoo boy! There has been quite a bit stated in the first three parts of this step-by-step tutorial. Ready to read some more about the creation of this year’s Illustration West 59 poster for the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles? Let’s do this!
So, now that a large part of the base background has been painted, let’s get deeper into the nitty gritty. With the frisket still on the art, there’s one more touch I wanted to do that could go horribly wrong – put some red spatter on the art.
Now, I don’t want to have spatter go just anywhere. It really only should go in the lower left corner. So, with high tech tools such as tape, a paper napkin, and some paper towels, I masked off a broad area where red paint would not be an enhancement. Why? Because I’ll be flicking it on with a toothbrush (preferably one that you do NOT use on your teeth), and also with a regular paint brush I’ll be flipping at the paper.
When done correctly, this is the result. Toothbrush did the finer spatter, flicking a larger brush created the bigger blobs. See how the lighter areas created from the salt work together nicely with the spatter?
Next, I want to dry brush on some ground with gouache over by the Griffith Observatory part of the painting. It is desired to have that BG orange show through, with just highlights of green to indicate the Hollywood hills.
Also with gouache, it’s time to paint that crowd. This is when it is a good thing to be able to see that ink line art through the paint. The gouache is going to completely cover it at this point. I went with a monochromatic approach. Takes long enough to paint all that detail as it is. No need to pick out a full range of colors on all those folks.
Notice some colored pencil outlines were created on some folks at this point. That’s because I wanted the pencil covered by some of those dry brush strokes that came after.
Speaking of those dry brush strokes, again with gouache, I painted some stylized lines emanating out of our escaping couple kind of in a radio wave type of thing typical of vintage space age art. Notice how those circular strokes kind of go up and join with the strokes of the green hills, helping to tie everything together design-wise.
Lastly, using gouache again, I painted a wavy border on three sides of the art. It’s a little wide, to accommodate image cutoff should this get printed as a poster, and to accommodate the art being put in a frame at some point. As you can see, the painting is taking shape, and is closely following that rough color comp created at the beginning of this project.
Come back TOMORROW when we will remove the frisket and continue on with the details!
Illustration West 59 wants your submissions! The deadline is October 31st! CLICK HERE for details!