This is a great stage to introduce this piece and simply begin talking about it. This is a very cool portrait of my father making a face that runs in my family (my sister does it as well). Up to this point, I am unsure of what will be going on in the background but am very satisfied with the color work so far (note: the background color is subject to change). Most of it is marker, color pencil and ink. One fourth of it has vector art highlights. While I love the brightness of the marker and mild texture it adds; I am tempted to rebuild the whole portrait as vector art to see what that would look like. Ultimately, I want to stay away from making this feel flat or seem "too digital". Holding me back from doing 100% vector art is the fact that I like seeing perfect vector circles paired with my imperfect line work. It is visually appealing to me. I think this is a stylistic quirk of mine that I should play around with for a while.
I have three other pieces that I hope to incorporate this type of marker-color-splash style into. Something tells me to finish this one before I get the other three to this point—if I finish it by next week I can review my steps and look for shortcuts when working on the other three.
Also, there is an irony—and a degree of excitement—in the fact that the children's illustration that I have done up to this point is very digital. The Art Director in me ventures to say that most pieces are kind of flat. While many are strong in composition and concept (mostly) there is a uniqueness that is missing. Seeing the image above on my blog, looking back at the work I have done up to this point, I would even say that the over-expressiveness of the characters is trying to compensate for the computer medium and does not contain the colorful hand-drawn freedom as the piece above. Yikes. Yes, every artist is their worst critic—I believe that is true in my case as well. Nonetheless—self critique is a necessary evil and it works! This week I will be going back into a few pieces to see if I can create a hybrid style that combines my two strengths: marker/ink hand-drawn illustrations and vector art. This may be the push I needed to hit a turning point in the style that I am building.
