Hey folks. I just wrapped up this illustration above last night. I always enjoy seeing other artist's process so I thought I would put something together for this piece I climatically (read: trying to make it sound real deep and profound..haha) titled Melancholia. 
So the assignment was to illustrate the poem "The Chair" by Russell Edson:"A chair has waited such a long time to be with its person. Through shadow and fly buzz and the floating dust it has waited such a long time to be with its person.What it remembers of the forest it forgets, and dreams of a room where it waits -- of the cup and the ceiling -- of the Animate One."
I enjoyed the visuals of the poem and the open-endedness that it allowed so I did some intial writing and word associations and pretty much anything else that came to mind when I read the poem. I tried to imagine different scenes and designs that could incorporate the different imagery. That's what you see above...all my initial thoughts.
After letting it swim around my brain for a little bit I began to narrow the focus to the flies that were mentioned along with the chair. I made a little green thumb that I really enjoyed and started to get jazzed. I kept on sketching ideas out.
These guys above were me goofing aroung trying to make decisions on composition and style. I went in between tight line work and more loose work at least every couple hours. I think I hit a nice medium in the final thankfully. 
After some talking with my teacher I made some value studies that spawned some color and style studies. My first idea from early on was to have the inside of the subway car be only black and white line and the outside be rendered in color, which you can see in the middle row. I didn't think that that was working too well so I went with the top right study and started cranking on the final.
This is the final line work. 80% is traditional brush pen and the rest is digital to clean it up and fill in some of the larger areas. You can see where I made some decisions such as the head of the foreground "grub guy" and the forest area. 
I went it and tried to stick to the complementary palette of the thumbnail although I tried to strategically use some yellow to pop some characters. I kept if flat and tried to work on value and what I wanted the focus to be (the chair.)
Kind of a big jump...but heres the final again. I overlayed some textures I found and scanned-in onto the suits and the large block above the characters. This along with using some film grain and other Photoshop jazz brought me to the final.
The timing worked out fairly well since we were in the process of making the Illest of Ill posters so graphic designer extraordinaire Willie Diaz (http://wdiazdesign.blogspot.com/) turned the illustration into a awesome submission poster!!
So looking back at the piece, I'm pretty stoked with it. It's my first major assignment in the new major and I think I started it off well. I did want to incorporate more traditional work into it though, so I'm making myself use more traditional materials on the next project. I'm also kind bummed at myself for going back to the green/red palette that I always rely on. I really need to expand my palettes. Hope this helps! Onto the next project!!
have a good one,
-francis
Hey guys!! At first I wasn't making any kind of progress on this piece but now I'm starting to crank! The problem I've been having with oil is that I was using very little paint with a lot of gamsol. I decided to start this guy with a palette knife forcing me to cake on the paint and, instead of gamasol, use Liquin to thin the paint. What a difference!!!! I feel like I'm finally starting to get a small grasp on how to paint with this oil business! This is about 5 hrs in. It should be a large/involved painting as this is still mostly a monochromatic painting and the final should be a exact copy of the painting (which has amazing subtle color all over the place). At lot more work...I'll post the final! take care,
