Refinements

I’m having a blast working on the final illustrations for my book right now. After working on my series of 50 portrait sculptures for a little over a year, working on these little quirky pen illustrations has been enormously refreshing and different. Most people think of me as a fine artist, so many don’t know that I actually have a degree in illustration.  Technically speaking, this is my first professional illustration gig!

Above you can see the final illustration for the chickens and eggs that I did a sketch for in this post. I had initially thought that I was going to go for a much tighter look.   However, when it came down to the actual drawing I realized that I tend to like to draw with a much looser hand, so you can see the strokes in the texture of the chicken feathers has a more gestural feel.

Conceptually speaking, the illustrations really range from literal interpretations, to metaphors and symbols that represent the ideas and content of the book.  The  idea is that with each page, you never quite know what image to expect so it will hopefully keep readers engaged in that way.