Well, I finally "finished" this little piece I've been working on. I put the word finished in quotations only because I have a hard time ever considering something done... finishing is just the point at which I'm too frazzled to continue on!
An old friend/co-worker reached out to me via social media for this project, as a piece of illustration for his upcoming wedding. He had a list of funny little quotes and conversations that he and his bride-to-be have had during the course of their relationship. The happy couple were arranging to have a bunch of them illustrated by some of their artistic friends and acquaintances and I was flattered to be thought of and included. I hope I get to see some of the other renditions and just how the couple puts these all to use for the festivities!
There were a few written prompts that jumped out at me, a couple were already claimed by other artists, so this was the one I ultimately chose.
Obviously the couple has a fun sense of humor... there were some other amazingly fun illustration concepts on their list, I only wish I had the time and ability to tackle them all!
Color is a skill that I'm very much still studying, practicing, and learning... so I'm not entirely happy with this, but I'm not beating myself up too bad either! I'm certainly more confident in my linework. As a comic book fan and focusing toward that area of art, I've always practiced most on the earlier stages of that production workflow; pencils and inks, thus they've come further along in my skill toolbox than the color stages. But it's something that I'm genuinely interested to learn and be able to be self sufficient... which can be very important for a self publisher who can't afford to pay a dedicated colorist!
Most of the work was done in Clip Studio Paint on an iPad Pro, with the lettering being my first experience working in Affinity Designer as I'm trying to evaluate if it can replace the much more expensive Adobe Illustrator in my workflow when it comes to lettering comics. It certainly looks promising so far!
Well, I'm off to watch some coloring tutorials on YouTube, and then with this commission now off my plate, tomorrow I'll pivot back to working on my comic, "I Thought It Would Be Zombies..."
I hope you all are having a productive weekend as well and checking some stuff off your "to do" lists!
- Bryan "the Imp" Imhoff
