I have finally settled come to decisions about the way I'll color my 2013 calendar. I guess it does not look TOO MUCH different from the way I would color any other illustrations.. But still, this was a sinuous thought process for me. Earlier this summer, I've had, for a client, to explore some traditional mediums, and find ways to make them look sharp with some photoshop mix-media magic. I loved doing it. That's when I came up with those images that later turned into patterns for some spoonflower fabric. Those umbrellas!! So fun! And I played with watercolor, crayons, dry pastel... And kept wanting to have a more chalky - oil pastel look. But the thing is, oil pastels are hard. I stink at it. I can't get them to be sharp enough to have any sort of definition. And even though a lot of work has to be done in photoshop whenever I work with traditional mediums (I am a photoshop artist... I can't really change that at this point. This is where the nice stuff happens, there is no way around it.. overnight.) this was not happening.
So... I was wondering, was it worth it to suffer with oil pastels for hours, to try and get something cool... only to end up scanning it and kind of drawing all over it from scratch to get the look that I want? Answer : Nope. Not worth it. The whole thing seemed like such a chore, and this is not how I wanna see my calendar. I am doing this on the side, for fun.
So I played around and made some new brushes. (digital ones, sigh) And found a way to like my January image, 100% photoshop. I guess I am a little tiny bitty bit disappointed. But I think this has a lot to do with the fact that traditional mediums take a lot of hours / weeks to master, and I keep underestimating it. Maybe I will have the patience one day to master gouache again, maybe not. In the meantime I need to come up with images that make me happy, and proud.