Puzzled and confused.

It's funny how something you spend so little time on becomes something you love the best.
The word from illustration friday this week is 'Puzzled' and I knew almost immediately I wanted to do
A) A photo manipulation involving illustration
and
B) vintage feeling

I've been reading a bunch of old crusty comic books when I've had the time.
(the things I unearth when procrastination-cleaning are as unimaginable as they are entertaining sometimes.)
And I wanted to give this project that same sort of crispy paper sort of feel, so it felt vintage even though the subject matter didn't necessarily reflect this.


see- that sweet sweet comic page feeling.

It didn't take long to slap down a few sketches, and even then I had a bad case of 'first sketch override', which is basically the inability to think of any idea besides the first idea I put on the paper. I kind of haphazardly doodled other ideas, but the tipped bottle of nail polish really spoke to me, and there were oceans of stock photos waiting for me.

The little nail polish monster was perfect, and I ran with it. It's a much more simple idea and design than I usually do, but I've really been feeling simplicity lately, and find that less can certainly be more.

My first attempt wasn't exactly what I wanted, but still pretty cute.

I didn't bother adding the vintage feel to it, since I wasn't happy with the monster. I put it away for a few hours, went and played with my family's new air-popper popcorn machine and came back refreshed and with a new mind.
My mind spat this out and I'm in love with it.

It's intended more as a desktop wallpaper than anything else, right now :D Let me know if you'd like the full sized file to use!

Thanks for reading!
-JessB