More old timey folks

Here is some more work I did for the Parks Canada project.
There was a lot of back and forth on these, so I thought it might be interesting to post some process sketches.

For the project as a whole, the art directors wanted the images to stick pretty tightly to the reference images provided. As someone who primarily does more conceptual illustration, it was a constant temptation to stray away from the material provided and add my own spin on things.
It took several rounds of revisions for each set of images, but in the end we did find something that made us all happy.
For some projects you get hired to do your thing, for others more so to provide a service.
This project was a bit more of the latter, but that made it all the more challenging and rewarding in the end.

Thanks to all the fine folks over at Parks Canada for this one!

Old timey Folks

Here are some more images from the same project.
I had about a day to do each one, so it was a fun chance to experiment with graphite and its many applications.

Parks Canada Mural Process

Process post!, here we go!

The art directors basically wanted a scene depicting the fort, river, Village and loading dock, showing the inhabitants going about their daily business,
so I presented thumbs showing the scene from three angles.



They chose #3, which I refined...



And refined some more...



After the color comp was approved, it was pointed out that the front man would probably roll the barrel instead of carrying it.



Back to the drawing board..



After a few more tweaks I was given the go ahead to go into production.

Since I neither had the studio nor hard drive space to execute a drawing this size, I had to break it up into 30x 22 inch sections and ink them separately.






Whew!
2 bottles of ink, 15 sheets of paper, and 200 scans later...

I had the final drawing!


I spent about a day and a half flatting the entire thing, painstakingly selecting each and every shrubbery with the marquis tool.
It is probably the most tedious part of coloring digitally, but I find flatting to be one of the most valuable tricks I've learned over the years.
Not only does it cut your file size down by almost half, but it can save hours, nay, DAYS of work.



Some quick color blocking, trying to figure out how to frame the scene.



Hilights:



Some additional textures:



Some detail shots:






And the final image:



I hope you all enjoyed that!
I'll be posting some more work from the same project in the next few days.

Cheers,

-Laura

Parks Canada Mural

Hey everyone!
Sorry for the long absence, these last few months have been some of the most insanely busy, yet ultimately rewarding months of my life.
Shortly before the end of last year I was approached to redo the illustrations at the Fort Langley National Historic Site.
In addition 14 other images, I was commissioned to do a 7x 16 foot mural as a centerpiece to the fort entrance.

I normally work fairly small, so it was a technical challenge executing something this size!
All in all, it took about two months to complete.
I'll be posting a lengthy process breakdown for this image as well as some other images from the project soon!

CD cover

Apologies to the 3 people who actually follow this blog. I've come down with a mad case of the lazies. Buuut...I've got some projects on the go, so expect some more updates soon (ish!).
I'll kick it off with something I've been working on for the past little while. A CD cover for a local rapper. I would have liked to have painted this one traditionally, but time constraints made me turn to photoshop.

Brainocorns and such

Just throwing around some possible ideas for paintings.

Lorelei, lotus, circus and THE BATMAN

Greetings! For those of you in or around Calgary I'll be selling some paintings and prints on June 21st at the 1st (hopefully) annual Artist's Collective Market. Some other fine young illustrators such as Brennan Kelly, Chika Ando, and Heather Reinhardt will be participating, plus a ton of other super talented people.
So yeah, if you're looking for some swank pictures to hang on your wall AND want to support some broke graduates, here's your chance.

A bit of obscure canadian history

Apologies for the lack of updates, but now with school over and done with and I finally have time to tend to my poor neglected blog.
Here's a little 2 page informational comic about the Ripple Rock explosion. Ripple rock was a natural shipping hazard that sank over 120 ships before it was blown up in 1958. Apparently it was the world's biggest explosion before the invention of the nuclear bomb. Aaaaand.... it all took place near my hometown, so naturaly I grew up thinking it was a pretty big deal, but literally no one I've ever shown this to has ever heard of it. Oh well, let this be your education.