Grounded. Also a shirt.

My first illustration is complete!
I'll show you the finished product at the end of this entry, But first allow me to walk you through my process for this piece!

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I wanted to take some of Art Shipman's style and involve it in my own work. I started out knowing I wanted to make a T-Shirt graphic, and know his (as well as my own) Cartoony style would work wonderfully.

The word I was given to base this graphic around was "Grounded", and while it has many different meanings, I chose to run with a dark monster-related theme depicting someone literally stuck in the ground.

I decided on my favourite thumbnail and refined the line art over top of the thumbnail sketch first. Given the loose, freehand sort of feel I wanted it to have, I left most of the line art as it was on the first pass. I didn't want it to look too crisp.

After that, I went at it with colours! I wanted to make sure I used some bright eye-catching colour, despite the somewhat dark subject.

I ended up sticking with a familiar colouring methods, taking little bits and pieces of Mr. Shipman's scribbly, hasty colouring style.

I find it really hard to colour outside the lines sometimes.

Here's the final design mocked up on a model shirt!

Overall I had a great time with this illustration, and I'm looking forward to next week's project! Here's a closeup of the face details :)

-JessB