Whitney by the lake

Hi there blog watchers! You can blame the Where's Wally animated series and it's over-the-top narrator for me always opening posts like this.

Today I'm sharing my newest piece of work, done for the lovely people at Happy, a Sydney-based online music and culture magazine. You may remember them from my illustration of the band Cull, which I did for them way back in April 2014. They were extremely happy (pun intended) with the outcome and frankly so was I! This time I was asked to draw Chicago based indie-rock band Whitney. This time I'd like to share my whole creative process for this work.

This brief had the same requirements as last time, a landscape piece featuring the band that was otherwise completely open to interpretation. I was asked to include only Max and Julian in my illustration, as they are the official members of the group. Like last time it was to accompany an interview with the band and also be featured on the main page of their website.

As a first step with any work I undertake, the first step was research. I immersed myself in all things Whitney: I watched video clips, read reviews and of course an image search of the subjects themselves. As per usual, it's the visuals that often influence me the most, so their music-videos is where most of my inspiration for the composition came from.

Throughout my research I jot down a quick list of imagery and ideas I might like to include in the work, this helps keep my idea simple and focused, which was especially important given the short amount of time I had available for production. The notes for this work include:

• Wilderness
• Pastel colours
• Desaturated colours
• Roses
• Autumn
• Shoes and rolled up pants

 The next step is to start sketching! Although I mainly complete my work digitally these days, I still find pencil to paper my preferred method for getting my concept down. These thumbnails are usually pretty small, (about 10cm max) so they are usually very rough and basic. I'm concerned more about the composition than accuracy at this point. This is quite evident when you look at the final artwork below.

I decided I really wanted to include their feet in the image, as I found their boots with rolled-up jeans look quite interesting and unique. Given the limited size and orientation it was impossible to draw their full bodies, so I instead opted for a reflection in water. This allowed me to have a tightly cropped image, showing both feet and faces, as well as a great idea for the setting: Many images and particularly the video-clip of No woman feature an Autumn wilderness that really suited my idea, not to mention a great tie-in to their album title 'Light upon the lake'

When I'm happy with the rough I move onto Photoshop.

 I'm currently using Photoshop CS6, one of the last retail versions available before Adobe changed over to subscription-based Creative Cloud. Tablet-wise I'm using a Wacom Intuos 3 - Medium size. It's an older model, before the 16:9 Wide-screen aspect-ratio became standard, so it's active area (4:3) is slightly reduced to conform to my modern display. At times I do consider it might be worth upgrading to one of the newer Intuos Pro models.

Technical stuff aside, once in PS I draw up my thumbnail to a significantly more accurate sketch using a basic brush tool set to a lower opacity. It's quite messy, but you get the idea.

The rest is a fairly simple process, which I'll cover more in-depth for my next post.

• I turn the opacity super low and draw up my final line-work.
• I create a fills layer below and drop in flat colours, this can sometimes take time for me to get right.
• I add a shades layer, using a fairly desaturated blue/purple set to multiply as this takes into account the base colours underneath.
• The rest of the steps can very depending on the work, but this is when I usually add highlights and other textual effects. 

That's pretty much it for the process. Below you'll see the final artwork along with a couple of close-ups of Max and Julian's faces. You'll notice I flipped the faces from the original sketch. When I'd finished the final line work I noticed I forgot to take into account the mirror reflection in the water.

My original idea was to paint the background leaves rather than doing my usual cell-shading look, but unfortunately I didn't come up with anything I was too pleased with. I really need to work on painting, as cell-shading does have it's limitations for background work. It was a shame, but I'm still real pleased with the outcome.

Read Happy Mag's interview here.

Thanks for reading. I'll hopefully have some more work for you all soon.

Cull in the void

So today I have something very special to share. My very first professional job. I received this job through email after the lovely Lulu Rae saw my Loop profile. Let this be a lesson to all that you should keep free portfolio websites up to date, they are just important as the ones you pay money for.

I was stoked! I couldn't believe someone actually wanted me to do work for them! I was to illustrate a band for Happy, which is a NSW based blog and web-zine that promotes local indie music acts.

The band in question was Cull, a NSW band that classify their style as friendrock/dreamgaze. These are not genres I'm at all familiar with, so I would suggest you have a listen here. You can also check out their website. I'm going to be honest and say that I hadn't heard of them before I started this work.

"Wow, let me just say first! Amazing illustration!!
We all love it. Thank you so much."

After a few back and forth emails about the requirements for the image, I set myself into research mode, which is always the first thing I do. This involved going on the bands Facebook page, website and Youtube channel. The later was for drawing (Pun!) inspiration from the visuals in their videos and the music itself. I concluded the music made me think about the unknown, particularly the great unknown expanse of the galaxy and universe itself. I considered the emptiness and excitement of space exploration, the final frontier as Star Trek calls it (big fan by the way). This was also helped by the clip to their newest single 'The Sacred Burial Urn' which features footage from a 1960's era science fiction. So I did some research into retro sci-fi and spacesuits, since being a portrait I need would something for the band to wear. Research done.

So into my sketchbook I went, though the entire process of the final artwork was digital, I still find it easier to sketch on paper first. This took about 4 hours or so, which is pretty quick for me. The whole time I was listening to Cull's Youtube channel on repeat to really get in the mood.

"You're so lovely!
I'm so glad you're as happy with everything as we are.
We are stoked!"

When it came to the band's faces, I ran into some difficulty. I don't often base the faces I draw on real people, and the only times I do is in life-drawing. What made it more difficult, was the lack of good photo-reference on the net. To get more I looked up previous bands the members had been in...I felt like a stalker!


The next step was to use my sketches to work up the line work in Photoshop. I usually start quite rough and slowly develop the drawing as I go. You might ask why the line art in red rather than the traditional black (which is what I usually do)? I knew that the background would be space, which is black (no, really?), so I thought black lines would mostly be lost in the background. Next time I do an artwork I'll be sure to take some screen-grabs so I can show my process in pictures. Until then, you must wait.

Most of the rest of the process is fairly self-explanatory, but I'll go into more detail when I have pictures to support what I'm saying. After being happy with the figures I moved on to the background. Now originally I decided to have a space shuttle flying through behind the band, but after finishing the figures I realised it might make the picture look a bit busy (not to mention the size the image would appear on the website would probably render the the shuttle too small to make out properly) and instead opted for a planet (with bonus moon).

So I finished the final image after about a week of fairly continuous work and emailed it to Lulu. What happened next was something I did not expect...

Now I will admit that on a personal level I thought this artwork as one of my best to date. However I didn't expect the fantastic response I received. I've interspersed this post with a few choice quotes by Lulu from our emails (used with permission of course).

"Thank YOU so much Reiko, people like you make it
easy and such a pleasure for us."

Truly, I was awed by her words. I was not expecting such high praise! I've really felt a boost to my confidence as an artist: I never imagined my first job would go so well. But it got even better! I also received a lovely message on Facebook from Alex Sol Watts, one of the members of the band. To get a positive comment from the band as well left me ecstatic.

I hope every job I do from now on turns out as well as this one did. It was such a joy to do. ^_^

Until next time...