Professional Project: Illustration Number Seven - Alfred Nobel

 

Alfred Nobel was the man who invented dynamite, amongst many other things, and founded the Nobel Prizes in his will. I decided to go a different route with the illustration through and looked at his love life. He never married but had three deep relationships, the last of which was with a flower girl called Sofie Hess from Vienna. They were together for 18 years until she fell pregnant by another man. Hence the image. Watercolour & fineliner. I wanted to keep it quite simple & stylised and tried to work in sepia type tones in the yellow and browns, due to the time period, but felt that it would be altogether too monotone if it was ill in this shade. So I left in some white highlights and added the blue to the faces and colour to the flowers to pick them out.

Always Looking Toned

 

I've evolved my style to encorporate skin tone which I think makes it look so much better. Especially with the tone that sits around the chin and stuff. Next time I'm thinking about going for full colour on the tattoos as well just to make it brighter. But that requires a lot of patience which I don't have much of. But as for this, I love it. This is probably my favourite draw I've done this year.

Always Looking Envious

 

I've abandoned the dating system. Another piece that I found time to draw in between spending 14 hour days on Illustrator. This is one of my favourite pieces that I've done recently. I think that the face has worked really well, the red and the green are subtle but highlight the areas well and the tattoos just give detail.

Always Looking Shaded

 

Got around to doing some of my own drawing for the first time in a while. Still using the same style but this time I went for a bit of shading with some grey brush pens. It's payed off on the face but I think i went a little bit overkill on the torso.

Professional Project: Illustration Number Six - Astronomy

 

This illustration took what is known as forever. Too much time on illustrator. I changed the Earth to a live traced version of a photograph, I also used this technique for the other planets. It just makes them seem a lot more realistic and less tacky. I'm pleased with how this turned out, I think it's quite effective to have all the squares black with the various images set inside them. I chose a font that I felt complimented the images and set it where I felt was appropriate given the flow of the imagery. I think the arrows work really well to give flow and direction to the illustrations and help to explain it.

Professional Project: Illustration Number Six - Square Two

 I jumped right passed square one, because that requires a completely new illustration, and just went for one that involves the MESSENGER craft.

I think this works well, I tried not to use any black in the craft so that it would stand out from the black background, I put a couple of gradients on the Earth to make it look a little more spherical. I think the colour of the arrow works well also, taken from the colour of the ones in 'Instructoart'. The typeface is bold but unobtrusive and I think I will have all of the text sitting in this position if possible.

Professional Project: Illustration Number Six (The Beginning) - Astronomy

Subject matter for illustration Number Six came out Astronomy. I researched this and it seemed like quite a difficult subject on the surface and all the information was really generic and dull. I delved a little deeper and looked at what is currently happening in the world of astronomy and discovered that the MESSENGER craft, launched six and half years ago, is nearly at it's destination of orbit around Mercury. This seemed much more interesting so I looked into this and found loads of facts like it's travelling at an average speed of 133,200mph and on entering orbit will have travelled 4.9 Billion Miles. Thats pretty far. So I'm illustrating it's journey with some of these facts thrown in. Here's my messenger.

It's not entirely accurate obviously as the real craft has so much on it and I needed it to be simpler.