Sunday, October 23, 2011

Update of Wonders

I recently finished this project for the Dixon Gallery and Gardens. The illustrations are being used  in the children's activities room, "The Room of Wonders, which is part of the current "From Houdini to Hugo" exhibit featuring the work of Brian Selznick. The exhibit is awesome, I encourage anyone interested in illustration to go check it out.
 I was asked to create three 3'x6' illustrations centered around the theme of "Wonder"(and the hand lettered title image). They basically left the content up to me, so it was really fun to work on these. The areas where the faces would be were cut out so the kids could look through the holes and see themselves in the picture.

I only had about a week and a half to do everything, which forced me to decide on the subject matter quickly. I was kind of glad for that, otherwise I probably would have spent an absurd amount of time second guessing whether whatever I drew sufficiently embodied "wonder".
I did the line drawings with physical ink and brush, then colored them digitally.

Here is Shane, experiencing the Wonder.
Blurry photo of the title on the wall. Signs and Designs did the printing, everything turned out looking great.

  They were set up inside a box, with the viewer facing a mirror and the illustration with cut-outs opposite that. Bad photo, but hopefully you get the idea.