Typography Illustration: Do your best Part 2

Happy Friday! In a previous post I showed some of the steps I take to create a typographic illustration. Now I will show you some of the steps I take to color a piece!

 

I generally do a quick thumbnail off to the side (or make a photocopy) to make sure the colors I use work in harmony. If you are working digitally, you can easily change the colors in photoshop, but with traditional work, it helps to work out your colors ahead of time.

 

 

I decided to use circus-inspired bold colors to match the bold fonts.

 

Once you have decided on your colors, start blocking them in. I always make sure to have another piece of paper under my drawing to help absorb some of the marker that bleeds through.

I use a variety of pen and marker types for my illustrations. Copic and PrismaColors are favorites of mine, but I also use Sharpies. Many of the colors you see in my finished illustration are a combination of several colors. Another useful tool in my typography illustrations is a chalk marker, which I use for the highlights on letterforms.

The finished illustration!

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The Cold Never Bothered Me

Original poster artwork.

Winter seems to be in it for the long-haul. I’m in the last leg middle of my second winter after my move from Los Angeles and it doesn’t seem like the cold will be letting up any time soon. Fortunately the last few days have been warm sunny.

I hear this winter has broken all sorts of records: Snow (it would seem) every other day. Several days with -26 degree wind-chills (today is a balmy -13 degree with the wind-chill). Snowvember! The list goes on and on. Good thing the “cold never bothered me anyway” or so I tell myself.

This wintry piece was inspired by the lyrics from ever-popular Let it Go song from Disney’s Frozen. I created it using several programs and started off with a sketch on paper. I’ve included some of the steps below:

The original sketch with pen and paper.

Once the sketch was finalized, I took it into the computer where I used several programs to get the lettering “just right”. Manga Studio by Smith Micro is a fantastic program for sketching or inking AND it can work in vector and pixels. The program seems to be under-appreciated and under-used in the art community. My artistic best buddy uses the program all the time and puts out amazing work. It’s a GREAT program and version 5 is a huge leap from version 4.  I used Manga Studio for most of the original hand lettering and sketching.

Lettering almost finalized and color swatches are in the corner.

I then took the file into Adobe Illustrator to clean up the letters and curves. I wanted to leave some of the hand-lettered feel, so not every curve and flourish is 100% perfect. Once the lettering was finished, I took the file into Photoshop where I added the colors and final touches. Here is the finished piece again:

Look for prints in my Etsy Shop soon.

What do you think?