My college is holding a poster contest to promote one major or another. My original idea was some shitty watercolor concept involving fishies. I bought illustration board, I took out a book from the library on painting, I practiced, I did a wash, I sketched in the elements I wanted, I colored it in with pencil over the paint...and I hated it so much I started completely over.
Look, I don't like to paint. I like drawing cartoons. So I decided that the best concept would use the fact that that I can draw in ink halfway decently. It would also have to be something I cared about. Not fishies. I mean, I like a nice lemony tuna or salmon, but mostly I don't give a shit.
I made the original sketch for this in art history class. Then I did an extremely rough, light sketch directly on the paper I was using, shaped it up a little, and inked it, without transferring it or doing any more preliminary work than the notebook drawing. I've been reading John K's blog, and I am impressed by how he preserves spontaneity in his final drawings. He does construct his characters, and very carefully, but they never come out looking stiff. I also kept in mind his theories of how to draw facial features and expressions as I inked.
I attempted to give some idea of hierarchy by using Sharpies of varying width, but I think I could have done a better job on this. The monkey's hands should have been done entirely with a smaller marker.
I tried digitally coloring it, but it didn't work well at all. The colored pencils I used instead were surprisingly good. I'll take a picture of it later.
