3.31.2005

Illustration Friday: Crowded


The theme is "crowded" for this week's Illustration Friday. This was probably the quickest I've ever done one. I had this idea of heads all squished together, did a quick search through other IF entries (I have this thing where if I find out if someone else did a similar concept or idea, I'll scrap it immediately and try to come up with something else), sketched it quickly on a piece of paper, scanned it, and painted it in Photoshop -- all within about 30 to 40 minutes. I'm having fun with this pastel brush they've got in Photoshop. I usually tweak some of the qualities to the brush, but I think it does a pretty good job getting that pastel look -- complete without all the chalk getting all over your hands and clothes. Can't beat that.

14 comments:

  1. I like it! The colours almost glow through the pastel texture. Now I want a pastel brush... time to upgrade from 5.5 apparently. ;o)

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  2. Tee-rific! Great stuff. Love your choice of colors. The strained expressions are a nice touch. Too cool!

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  3. Cool! I feel claustrophobic just looking at it.

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  4. Excellent expressions. Great sense of movement. And, thanks for the tip about the pastel brush.

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  5. First I thought it was a joke. This page loaded in Safari with a big white box, and then the detailed description made it even funnier.

    Then I switched to Firefox and saw the coolitude in all its glory. Sweet.

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  6. hey! you have a beautifull place here. your work is great. sorry but my english is limitated... ja.

    congratulations!

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  7. I have the exact same "thing" about I-Fri. entries. I scrapped two ideas before I finally settled on the one I currently have posted. I love how your colors bleed into the different faces, as well as the expressions. :)

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  8. it's fantastic. it reminds me of stained glass. in fact that would be awesome stained glass. you hit the nail on the head!

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  9. Thank you all for your kind comments. I really appreciate them. drybrush, that's true, it does sorta look like stained glass, doesn't it? In fact, I was a big fan of that look back in college, and loved Henri Rouault's work, which resembled stained glass at times. Thank you all for visiting!

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  10. I love the oil pastel look to the piece! Now I have to look for the pastel brush on Photoshop CS.

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  11. Ward! I love your stuff. You'v got a real flare for choosing the right colors.

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  12. That looks great, Ward! I understand what you're saying about making sure that what you come up with for IF is original. Me, I like to come up with my own take, and then see what everyone else came up with. If there's something similar, I chalk it up to great minds thinking alike.

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  13. I have completely felt like this before :) You really captured it.

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  14. I was writing a post on the theme 'crowded' triggered by Weekend Wordsmith and did an image search for crowded in google and your picture came up on the first results page. I liked it so much that I had to use it for my post. Hope you don't mind. People thought I had painted it and I had to rectify their assumptions. Hope you get some traffic through my post to make up for that.

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