These are a few samples to show what I would like to do as illustrations.
To see title, size, materials, year, and present location of picture, hover your cursor over the image. To view all pictures as a slideshow, click on any picture.
Future illustration projects on the drawing board are historical or educational in nature, such as the history of bicycles, fountain pens, antique tools or tractors. The posters will be in the style of botanical or old encyclopedia illustrations.
This sort of artwork is probably the most rewarding or pleasurable for me, because it makes record of scarce or valuable things in our world, and pushes my drawing and lettering skills. It's also very educational while I am researching a project.
A dream I have is to connect with avid collectors of any kind who would like to have a record of the their collection widely available.
If you or someone you know would like to collaborate and earn income on a poster of your collection, please contact me for further information.
Materials
The illustrations are usually made in pencil, ink, watercolor, or gouache, on heavyweight hot press paper.
Technique
The first step in making a poster is to research the subject matter. In addition, a great deal of research goes into finding appropriate fonts, coloring, and graphic elements for that subject matter.
Next, I prepare the thumbnail sketches of the individual objects and the overall composition of the picture. Sometimes I do a quick wash preview of the colors and value placements.
I have found that designing my grid digitally and printing it has been a big time-savor, especially in the case of the alphabet where I would have had to draw all my guidelines 26 times. My thinking is that my time is better spent on what people will see than on what will be obliterated anyway.
The lettering is drawn by hand, although I use reference materials on fonts to see other typographers solutions.
Eveything is penciled in with a 1B Dixon Ticonderoga pencil, and a white vinyl eraser. I use templates, rulers, and erasing shield, and a compass on a heavy weight smooth card stock.
It worked well to paint all the borders first, one color at a time. Painting straight lines requires a different approach than painting the objects. It is easier to stay in an exacting frame of mind of body, then shift to other mindsets and working paces. It helps to work from the inside to the outside edge of the picture to keep from smearing the paint. All the pictures are retouched after the first pass of painting the whole alphabet. There are two coats or more of paint on the whole surface of the picture to obtain completely opaque coverage.
It's really a lot of fun to see a group of people looking through them, guessing the names of the objects pictured. Some people come up with words I didn't.