Posts Tagged ‘illustration’

symbolism

I created this portrait of Michael J. Fox showing innocence through the use of religious symbolism.

trick or treat

I created the Kraken card in the same set that included the Cheshire Cat and Albatross cards. This card game also includes extra cards on how to create each costume worn by the card characters.

illustration, design, and marketing

I recently interviewed with marketing professional extraordinaire (and good friend) Andrea Stout over at MarketingVirgin.com. We talked about illustration, design, and marketing of course! A little removed from my usual casual writing, but informative!

Graphic design is typographical functionalism. A visually pleasing layout of information that guides the viewer through your message in a specific order. This is a crucial tool to have in marketing. Unlike the uniqueness and individuality of illustration, graphic design is often times more anonymous, catering to the clients branding needs. But, illustration usually does not exists without graphic design, the latter being the vessel which enables illustration to tell its story. In the recent years, photography has replaced the use of illustration in many functions, because of the rise of image stock houses and cheap prices, this has opened up new opportunities for companies to start using custom illustration again to gain an edge over their competition. Even though is it usually a less expensive option, photography is bound by the tangible rules of the world we live in, this is a very limiting fact, and illustration will always be able to take you to places you have only dreamed of. It is truly limitless.

Read the whole post on What is Illustration?.

My love for advertising translates right into my passion for learning more about marketing. I am very excited about the launch of MarketingVirgin.com and using the lessons covered to boost my projects. Posts such as the Search Engine Marketing run through can be used by anyone with a website, not just marketing professionals! I think that all of you who work in marketing, and even those of you who are interested in marketing your own business, or just learning more about it, will find MarketingVirgin.com to be a super useful blog.

using textures effectively

You want a matured and completed look to your illustration, but there’s something missing. I find this problem in a lot of illustrations created purely in Photoshop, everything still looks too smooth and sterile. Often, adding a simple paper texture layer will do the trick. Natural looking textures bring harmony to finish up your illustration. We’ll look at the texture application in my Tattoo illustration as an example.

Tools:
• Adobe Photoshop (CS or higher)
• Downloaded or scanned old paper texture (high res.)
• Nearly completed illustration

Open your nearly completed illustration in Photoshop. Open your preferred texture file and place it onto your illustration as a new layer.

Oh, you don’t have a texture you want to use? Okay, let’s backtrack for a minute. Here are your options:

• Take high resolution photographs of textures you like
• Scan in (at high res.) flat textures
• Create your own texture in Photoshop (I don’t do this, but it can be done)
• Or the lazy easy fix, search and download (ahhh, the power of Google)

I will make it even easier for you, with some links to start you off right: mayang.com/textures, and texturewarehouse.com. (remember to give credit when required)

Now, pull you’re texture onto your illustration. Set the blending property of this new layer to multiply and the opacity to 30%.

Duplicate your newly created texture layer (by dragging it onto the new layer icon in your layers pallet). This second texture layer should be above your original texture layer. Let’s set these properties to Linear Burn at 50%.

Here is the paper I used.

Old Paper Texture

You can mess with the blending properties, you can add more texture layers, feel free to experiment.

The first frame has no textures, the second frame has the one layer of texture at 30%, and the third has the second texture layer at 50%. I am always pleasantly surprised by the huge difference only a simple texture can make.

Texture Process

Tags: art, design, illustration, textures, tutorial
Filed under: art & design tutorials