Saturday, March 3, 2012

Picture Story: Christmas ride

The picture that became "Christmas ride" is another of the sketches that I had started in August 2011 while sitting at the art walk.

The original idea of the sketch was to have the deer — with ridiculously long legs — going off the picture plane. It was supposed to be abstract in that way.

 
Well, by the time I had printed it out as a blue page to be inked - the deer was no longer tromping off the page.

In fact, by the time I colored the deer — it had a new stranger kind of perspective.  The funny thing is — this was one of the first graphics I actually started working on a colorized scan of as it pertains to the calendar graphics, but I kept waffling on finishing it.

 Anyway, I got the colorized / colored-over drawing of the deer all scanned into photoshop and cut the scan and got my composition file ready — and then I needed a background.
Now, since the deer is leaping through the air and I intended for this to be a wintery / Christmas-y graphic (because it was the graphic for December) — I needed a sky. And because I was in a rush, whatever plans I may have had to create something specific to this picture were dumped in favor of using something I already had.

My starry sky was originally created for "violet night." It's also the starry sky that I used in "deer in the winter woods." But I wanted a more subdued version, so I used a layer of color over it.

I also wanted my sky to look more like a sky and less like a flat patternesque plane — so I selected a sky photo to superimpose over my stars.

And then, because it's a winter picture — I added a layer of my snowflakes.

The girl wasn't originally a planned part of the composition.  But looking at the deer over the sky in my file — it was just missing something. Now, eschewing the normal process, I actually just printed out a super-lightened copy of my deer and literally — with a pencil sketched the girl onto the composition. I inked that with a very thin-lined pen, and then colored it with prismacolors. I scanned that drawing into photoshop, cut the scan and added it to the file.

And, voilĂ : "Christmas ride"

5 comments:

R. J. said...

Gorgeous! I love reading about your steps taken in the process. Playing with photos are fun, but I have no drawing skills, so I play with photos.

Tabor said...

This has become a rather compelling drawing. Love it!!

Bob Bushell said...

Brilliant drawing, superb.

Janine - Foxtail Creek Studio said...

Hi Sarah, long-time Twitter follower here, but I guess I didn't realize you had a blog until just now. I've only read about Christmas Ride and Hootenanny so far, but I love them both! You produce beautiful work :)

Tammie Lee said...

it is so interesting to read how you created this. i have no experience doing anything like this. it is gorgeous!