KILLING MY LOBSTER 2013 SEASON

 It's been a while since I've done a full blown traditional illustration, and for this project I made that one of my goals. To be honest, I kind of missed breaking out the acrylics and gouache, and setting out to make something that could actually be framed and hung on a wall. Though this time around I changed up my technique a little.

 The first poster I did for the Killing My Lobster Theater group a while back started out this way, but I got antsy and jumped the gun with photoshop before really getting the paints right, but that time around I started out with Acrylic inks. I didn't quite lay out the inks properly and that was part of the reason, I rushed it to photoshop. By the time I got to the gouache the inks in the background wouldn't let the areas I wanted to focus on have a decent amount of saturated color when applying the paint. So this time around I worked the inks a little differently.

 You'll notice where there are characters I pretty much just let the drawing show through. This is because I wanted the characters to stand out, and to do that it meant I had to apply very few layers, and be careful not to overwork those parts of the painting. Now that I've got this down a little better I don't think I'll need to use acrylic paints for my underpainting anymore. I can just stick to inks, which I like better, because it doesn't have that plastic texture of acrylic paints. Acrylic paints also bounce the light back to the scanner in a way I'm not fond of. Not saying the gouache and inks I use don't do that, but it's a lot less prominent with thinner wash layers.

 I didn't feel as though I needed photoshop with this one, but from my experience, people have become use to that smooth quality of a photoshopped image so yes I "retouched" the image a bit, but not completely. I do enjoy the blend of traditional and digital mediums. It adds the best qualities of both worlds. In fact, some parts of the painting aren't retouched at all and all of the parts that are have the opacity turned down to some degree so that some of the texture from the paints and paper show through. All in all this is my favorite poster for this group to date, and since I'll be working with them all of next year there will be more to come.