It was my friend Justin’s 60th birthday last week. You know – the chap with the chalet in La Clusaz where the self-styled ‘Sonneteers’ gather for their annual ski trip? That’s the fella.
Anyway, earlier in the year some of his other friends sounded me out on the possibility of commissioning a bespoke illustration as a birthday present. I was happy to take it on – there was plenty of time to fit it in and these private projects usually provide tons of artistic freedom and can be a lot of fun. I decided early on to go for a format I’ve used before when making birthday images for members of my family: a visual compilation of items of significance to the recipient, arranged in a grid of squares corresponding to the landmark age in question and headed ‘x reasons to be cheerful at x’ (where x = the relevant age). Make sense?
The x-factor this time round was, however, significantly higher than on those previous occasions…
Any project like this requires a very methodical approach and before any sketching could start, we needed to compile a list. I jotted down a few initial ideas but they fell well short of the requisite sixty. Try it yourself – it’s tricky, even for someone you know well. Fortunately, some of the others had known Justin since University days and were able to provide plenty of anecdotal inspiration and even a few extremely useful reference snaps. With the final list complete, I then found myself somewhat masochistically dividing it into separate topographical categories after I spotted that most of the sixty items would lend themselves to being placed into a particular section of an underlying background landscape. This in turn led to the eventual layout in which a scenic backdrop is anchored to a tightly-structured grid, with individual items alternately boxed-in or placed within the context of the background. Once the tortured logistics of all this had been worked out, the actual content thankfully fell into place with relative ease.
Here’s how it evolved. First off, the aforementioned grid; this provided the scaffolding for everything that followed. Boring but essential for a piece as complex as this:
This is the final rough sketch, after all the content had been fine-tuned and agreed on:
I then produced a basic, minimally-detailed background in Illustrator:
…followed by line artwork, drawn in six sections using SketchBookPro on the Cintiq. Dividing it up like this keeps the file size down and ensures a snappier performance from the software:
Here you can see the rough sketch with its opacity reduced, and the line artwork traced over on a separate layer:
The various elements were then assembled in Photoshop, with colour and typographic content (created in Illustrator) added on separate layers. Keep clicking image below to enlarge for a detailed look:
Finally, here’s the birthday boy with the finished item, giclée printed on textured art paper and simply framed in white. I’m pleased to say it was enthusiastically received and came as a complete surprise to him; everyone involved had kept impressively schtum.
Blimey! Nice one Geo! I know how long those things take to do. I’m sure he was mightily chuffed!
Sent from my iPhone
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Cheers Paul – if anyone understands, it’s you! Chuffed he was – it went down a treat.
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Great post!
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That’s awesome!
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Amazing work!
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Thats awesome….great post. hats off
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That is fantastic! I was a medical illustrator and draw our Christmas cards every year, so I appreciate the work that went into this work of art!
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Very nice! detailing is awesome. 🙂
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Like the motorcycle in the middle thing…
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amazing!
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Thanks very much for the positive comments, everyone. The blog seemed an ideal place to share a piece of work that was essentially made for the smallest audience imaginable – one person! – and would otherwise have disappeared from view once it had been handed over. Also, I always enjoy learning about other artists’ techniques so if anyone out there finds the ‘process’ part informative, then great!
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lovely illustration. 🙂
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This is great! Love the creativity 🙂
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Thanks, Veena – glad you liked it!
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Like the set up and break down on this one quite a bit. Have a birthday commission I’m roughing out in a similair concept but different approach.
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Reblogged this on heinhtetpaing and commented:
Busy
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Always wanted to be an illustrator but unfortunately I can’t draw for nothing. Just stick figures and those are horrible as well lol
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sweet illustrations, reminds me of the legend Joe Sacco. so detailed.
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Wow – praise indeed. Love Joe Sacco!
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Awesome piece, and love the process shots and description of how the piece was created.
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Cheers, Jason. A piece like this does involve a kot of ‘process’! Glad you found it interesting, I know I always love reading similar ‘how to’ pieces by other artists so I hoped it might be useful.
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Wow, this is wonderful! Great job!
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Thanks, Holly – very kind!
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Reblogged this on ARTE, SIMPLESMENTE….
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awesome
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Rebloged. Awesome
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Reblogged this on ScrapNotes and commented:
Creativity at its peak
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Thanks, Jithin – that’s very kind of you!
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Reblogged this on Ninja Networking Engineering by Barki Mustapha .
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Super creative, good job!
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Thanks – very kind!
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I liked seeing your drawings and learning about your process in putting everything together. Your friend is so lucky to have you in his life!
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Thanks for visiting Eva, glad you found it interesting. Justin seemed delighted with the finished item which made all the (considerable!) effort worthwhile.
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WoW! ❤
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