Illustration Friday -- Forward

Well hello there blogging community, so good to see you again. This week's illustration word is forward. I'm really excited for it because 'forward' has the potential to be very poetic, and I'm just that kinda girl! This week I'm taking my inspiration from Walter Wyles. This image has a monochromatic feel, but the focal point is in contrasting tones. The main scheme is cool blues and the focus is in warm orange tones.

These are the concepts I've come up with. My interpretations of the word went from, Fast Forward, to Pay it Forward, to No way but forward, then finally pushing/moving forward. The concept I'm going to continue with is the one on the second row, first on the left. I was listening to Snow Patrol's "Lifeboats" and it made me think that sometimes life gets rough and scary and sometimes you need to swim out farther in it to get to safety. You have to push into the heart of the problem before you can fix it or ride out the storm.

To incorporate Wyles' style I'm going to use a monochromatic blue harmony but have the Life Preserver a contrasting orange. I'm also going to use a wash effect, similar to what you see in the lady's dress, and use watercolours to do so!

After I transfered my template onto watercolour paper and sketched out my design I began applying my washes. I Started with a pure blue pigment wash, then applied a wash where I had mixed the blue with a small amount of black. On the sky portion of this piece I mixed violet, blue and black to contrast slightly against the water.

Next I applied a very watered-down orange wash to the life preservers.

I then added shadows to the Life Preservers by mixing orange and blue, its complementary colour, to neutralize the orange creating a realistic shadow hue.

After the details were completed I scanned the image into my computer for digital retouching and to add the text.

Finally here you have it! I really love the eery feel to this piece; the calm before the storm. Watercolour is my favourite media so I was really excited to work with it on this :)

Happy weekend. Cheers,

~ Jen