"Wolfe Jr. Mystery" illustration, random sketches, and a short story.

Wolfe Jr. Mystery

illustration

My wife loves the murder Mysteries of Nero Wolfe. After watching some of the Dramatized versions, I realized it is almost impossible not to fall in love with Nero Wolfe and the cast of characters surrounding him. I wanted to portray a hypothetical novelization of Wolfe cast with children.

Regarding the illustration itself, it opened up the final pathway I needed to gain absolute control and stability for future illustrations. It seems in the past I have had to relinquish some aspect of my illustration creating process to chance, but no more. I found a way to work totally greyscale, and on a separate layer work on my color a little bit, and then go back to my greyscale at any time to further render. Ultimately if I broke it down I had 5 layers:

Layer 1: linework/sketch

Layer 2: Value/greyscale painting

Layer 3: Ambient color fill. Layer set on Soft Light.

Layer 4: My actual colors. Layer set on Overlay.

Layer 5: finalize/sync/freepaint.

They are not necessarily in the order they are arranged in my file, and to be quite honest I probably have over 20 layers, but you get the idea.

Bonus "Sketches"

I loosely use the word "sketches", because they are essentially mini illustrations (minus the pencil scribbles at the top). The purpose of this scanned and edited page from my sketchbook was to show the different types of illustration processes that I prefer.

1.The striped hoodie is my current process, the one I used on Wolfe Jr.

2.The beach scene was done using my old digital illustration line-art process.

3.The girl in the pink shirt is a style I want to explore/get better at. I love using black and simplified color that way.

If I were to label in order the time it took to create each of the sketch illustrations from longest to shortest, it would be 1, 2, 3. I'm contemplating on spending more time on illustration process type 2 as a secondary style, but for now type 1 is my prima donna.

Finally, I recently participated in a short story contest over at FlossandChaos. Go ahead and check it out: http://flossandchaos.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=90#p153 If you can't figure out which one is mine, it is the one titled, "Click, Click."