IF- Prepared

"Prepared." 2012 Graphite and Digital.

Here is this weeks fun illustration! I barely squeezed it in-between a paid project/commission I am working on. I'm sure I could spend several more days on this illustration, but I need to move on, so I can finish my paid one. I chose to illustrate this weeks topic, "Prepare." As to the subject, I've noticed a huge resurgence of Sherlock Holmes (movies, TV shows, etc), and thought I would take a fun, yet conservative stab. I tried to leave alot of things in this illustration unresolved, yet conclusive (Which are probably the most memorable, and powerful illustrations) and I also filled it with a bunch of fun details, which Holmes world and personality immediately populated the picture with. (As to where his HAT might be...well it is by the the front door of course!)

This past few weeks, this thought crossed my mind: There are countless things that make an illustration mediocre... for me, I'm starting to realize that most my illustrations are SOMETHING out of NOTHING. In other-words create an entire illustration mostly on a funny/profound idea or concept from my head. Though the idea is great, the characters and what surround them are often flat, and lifeless. As a new movement (at least for these fun weekly illustrations) I am going to branch out into the world of either well known characters, or well known stereotypes (people and personalities that come naturally to me, and easy to imbue the drawing with their personality.)

In the past I've been building my illustrations off of a detailed pencil sketch, for this one I tried to not only leave as much of the pencil intact, but to let it do most of the work...IE have the color support it. To be quite honest I'm very pleased with the results.