Crowded: New York View

This is the finish for my third Crowded New York Series and I'm very pleased with it. There are several elements of this illustration that I like a lot and most of them have to do with the composition of the drawing and textures within the color. 

Reworked Flat Colors for Crowded New York III

This a reworked version of the flat color layer after my class on Tuesday night. My instructor Matt Rota stepped in with suggestions on how to get more out of the available colors and gave me an extensive tutorial on the finer points of coloring. I was encouraged to keep the colored layers I usually add to pieces in the vein of painterly as opposed to organic elements which I totally agree with.

I would be very pleased if I could work like this consistently.

Flat Colors

After doing two of these (Crowded New York I and II) I'm finally starting to see how necessary is to find ways to unify everything. For some reason I had it my head that my traditional approach to coloring wasn't going to work inside a computer...Duh. 

I have to do something about the blacks in this one-they're very heavy. When it comes time to add some other elements, I'm going to incorporate a lot of New York funk on the walls to get away from the flatness. Plus, this is New York! If I wanted boring walls, I'd move to Minneapolis-Saint Paul. 

Crowded New York III: The Streets

                                                    

I thought it would be good to show the original sketch alongside the tightened up drawing. Now that I'm looking at the drawings side by side, I miss the bricks on the building behind the crowds and the cars.

Crowded New York II: My Dinky Apartment

Here's the fully colored version of Crowded New York II: My Dinky Apartment. Several layers of painting were put into this illustration and its review went well. Matt Rota (my teacher and his guest Rich Tu) spoke with the class about it at length and I got a lot of positive comments and tips on how to improve it and what to avoid in the future.

This is a reworked flat color layer that will be incorporated into the hand painted elements to come. My instructor gave me some very helpful tips on how to address unifying an illustration like this that has so many little items spread across it i.e. using contrast and volume to accentuate the bigger shapes that are available.

Crowded New York II: Elements Of Color

 

All the paintings above are elements created for the second Crowded New York illustration. I am running into the problem of mincing up my coloring process which I will have to minimize for consistency.

All in all, it's much easier to handle illustrations like this now that I have a bit of a road map in place to get the work done. I look forward to finishing five of these.