One of the things I enjoy about making drawings on location is that the results are your own. No need to search for photos online or look through books for reference images of second-hand impressions. In the past I’ve asked people to model for me when I needed to draw figures or set up still life groups when illustrating food or products. Of course, that isn’t always possible when working on illustration jobs and often I need to look at others photographs for reference.
As I have never visited Brazil, this series of illustrations
for a travel magazine spread of Rio de Janeiro were drawn from a variety of
secondary source material. The client sent me some images, I researched some
more using Google, looked at a couple of videos and also looked at the location
on Google Earth. It is always important for me that I don’t copy other
creatives work, as I wouldn’t want mine copied, so that thought is in my mind
when I start. I also am trying to create images as I would if I were there, in
the actual location, thinking about which elements I would focus on, what shapes,
what colours and patterns are important. The idea is always to use the
photographs as an aid and not let them dictate the outcome of the illustration.
When creating images for a client I firstly supply a black
and white line ‘rough’ to give an idea of what the finished image will look
like. Nowadays I try to work directly on these roughs to develop the actual
finished illustration so as not to lose any spontaneity that was there in the
initial stages.
Here are a couple of the roughs for this series:
Here are the finished pieces:
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