Illustration in Progress

Here is something some may find interesting. If not, I apologise profusely.

A little run-down of an illustration in progress. I started the illustration knowing that I wanted weird baboon-like creatures chasing a kind of glowing squirrel. It had been a slow day. The ravonous creatures ended up being baboon/racoon/tortoise...thingies, which can only lead to good times. Unless you're a squirrel with stripes and antennae, such as the other creature in this illustration. I have done numerous thumbnail compositions and ideas in my sketchbook, which I will hopefully scan soon. A meteor came crashing through my window earlier, which is near my sketchbook, and I'm too scared to approach it at the moment (aka, I can't be bothered).

I pencilled and then inked the drawing, and scanned it in, and voila, the black and white image is basically what i have infront of me on my Photoshop screen as we speak. Big, scary and balck and white. This fear of where to start on a big white canvas usually leads me to do these colour study things, which is the black and white drawing turned 72dpi so that it's small and easy to move the brush around without being precious about anything (which I have a nasty tendancy to do on digital software...take waaaaay too much time and care over things, getting tied up on small details and often ruining the overall effect). This way i can quickly try different colour schemes and compositional changes, or at least see things I'll have to work out at a later stage (such as what colour the squirrel will be...I'm really not sure yet, I'll see how the rest of the illustration looks when it's done and I'll colour the little fella to balance the rest of the illustration, and to add a little dash of colour.

As you can see, my thumbnails are ridiculously messy and no-where near the standard I've seen some artists do them (or what a client would want from me) but when I do illustrations for myself, I have quite a good idea of what I'm trying to achieve in my head, at least atmosphere-wise, and so I keep it quick and simple just to get the 'feeling' down on paper, just so I feel a bit more 'prepared' for what's to come, and not spend hours on a piece and then realise it looks awful, and having to start again...

Phew. Sorry, the length of this post seems to be getting out of hand! I'll post up this illustration in progress as it happens, so please, drop by and check it out!

As always, thanks for looking!