Diane Thornton

Writer Extraordinaire, Illustrator-for-Hire

Step-by-Step: A Painting in Progress

This is the process I typically use for illustration and watercolor, especially if the project is a little complex. The advantage of the process is that because the drawing is done on the computer, I can tweak, update, rearrange and re-do at any point short of the painting itself (there's no 'undo' in the real world). I do basically the same process, even on spot illustrations.

I'm using a painting I did for Half Moon Bay Winery as the example.

 ^ This is the original photo. This is Cunha's Country Grocery in Half Moon Bay, California.

^ Composing in Photoshop. Here I've bastardized the original photo to make the building more idyllic. Note the tower, windows and awning have been enlarged. I've also added people from other photos, and taken away some who were there.  If I drew the building as it really is, you'd be overwhelmed by all that wall. No way am I going to go to the trouble of making my Photoshop composition perfect. Things exist here that will not be in the final art. The Photoshop composition is more of a guide than anything else.


 

^ The composition has been brought into Illustrator. I've painted in yellow (Wacom tablet, natch) so I can see the lines against the photograph. The yellow lines are on a layer above the photo so I can toggle off the photo itself and see the drawing. Because I'm lazy, I even cheated a little: See how the sign on the left side of the building is the same as the sign on the front of the building? I only had to draw it once - then I copied, scaled and sheared to create the sign on the left.

Note how I've added items in the store windows, the doorway, curtains in the windows, etc., that weren't in the photo, and ignored crap I didn't want in there.
 

^ The yellow lines have now been converted to light grey and areas I don't want to attempt with a paintbrush have been drawn in their final colors. In some paintings, I'll make the grey lines thicker and black, as they will be part of the final painting. Or I will leave the drawing grey and come in after the painting and hand-ink. Depends on the look I want in the end product.

Here's where that advantage of drawing in Illustrator comes in. Say a client decides he doesn't like the truck I've drawn outside of his building. Or he really had pictured a Pontiac GTO with red flames on the side. I can delete the truck (and/or put in that GTO) and reprint the drawing. Once the drawing is approved, the watercolor is a go.
 
From here the drawing is output on 9x12" Arches Cold Pressed watercolor paper in archival inks on an Epson 2200.

 

^ I've now painted over the grey line drawing and produced the final watercolor. This is then scanned into Photoshop... 

^ ...and incorporated into the final product, a 3"x4" wine label.