Digital Illustrations

First off, I have no idea why Squarespace seems intent on dating this post March 2019. I have tried all sorts of things to get it to change. I have put my hands up in frustration and given up. Maybe it will sort itself out. Anyway, on to the purpose of this post.

I get a fair number of quote requests for digital animal portraits but most people don’t end up purchasing them. I suspect people may think they are too expensive ($100). I wanted to show my process so that people can understand why I charge what I do. I think there may be a perception that because it’s digital art that its easy or that I have an automated process that “digitizes” or “cartoonizes” the pet pictures they have sent me. My creations generally take between 4 and 6 hours depending on the complexity. I haven’t automated any of the process and draw all elements by hand.

All that being said, I thought I’d show you how I create my digital illustrations, using my feline-forward re-creations of a couple of famous paintings as examples.

I begin my digital pieces with reference images and draw the basic shapes using the mouse in a program called Affinity Designer. The shapes I make are vector graphics.

A vector graphic is a digital image comprised of points, paths, curves, and geometric shapes. Unlike raster graphics, which use a fixed grid of pixels, vector graphic files have no fixed resolution and can be resized, stretched, and otherwise manipulated without any quality loss (source: techterms.com)

I then add colour and shadows to the shapes to create depth within the illustration. I also add patterns or texture using raster brushes - some of which are included in the software I use and others which I purchase from sources like Frankentoon (Frankentoon Studio).

When I am recreating a famous painting I try to include all elements of the painting. For example, in my re-creation of Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait I included the reflection of the room and ‘painter’ (me) in the mirror on the far wall which the painting is well known for.

Below is a timelapse of my re-creation of American Gothic by Grant Wood. I have sped it up and cut our certain bits to keep the run-time as short as possible.

AmeriCat Gothic

These pieces are a labour of love and I get great satisfaction from seeing the end result. I also love seeing people at the markets I attend smiling and laughing at the silliness of the illustrations.