This is a piece I did for the Wall Street Journal' with Pete Hausler for the Personal Journal section.
Because of the time demands of Newspaper publishing the turn around was short. I got Pete's email asking about my availability late Thursday, because of other work I had I didn't get him the sketch until late in the day Friday.
I was given a short synopsis of what the article was going to be about which was basically treating hayfever with a patch. Pete had a few suggestions, have a couple of scientists in a field of flowers looking at a flower through a magnifying glass. Done.
He promptly called me back to say we needed to nix the magnifying glass because there was another illo. in the same section that prominently featured one. Also, the editors thought the female scientists was too plain.
Being it was so late in the day I didn't get him the revised sketch until Sat. morning. Pete got back to me mid-day Sat. the revised sketch was a go. He needed to have the finish by lunch, Mon. I got it to him by 2:00 Mon. afternoon and it was in the following days paper.
From previous work I've done with Pete I knew that printing on newsprint was going to de-saturate the palette so I pumped up the colors to a somewhat ridiculous degree to compensate. Which turned out to be a good idea because in the printed piece the colors were a bit more subdued and I really wanted the color scheme of the flowers to have a chaotic quality.
8 comments:
I really dig the brightness of the flowers...that's a great tip. Nice piece!
Thanks Rob, in an earlier piece I did over the holidays for the Journal, I had used what I thought were very strong color choices thinking they'd have more of a graphic punch. But much to my surprise the colors didn't have the impact I was striving for. Newsprint acts a bit like a sponge, it diffuses the ink.
Fantastic colors! great piece, I love it!
Thanks Tin, I'm a little surprised by the comments on the colors, I really thought they were a bit over the top. However the printing of the piece on newsprint did cool them down bit.
Great work Kelly! Gotta love those quick turnarounds!
Thanks Rendez, yeah those quick turn arounds are little like fire drills.
I really think this vivid coloring approach makes your line drawing stand out more. It also makes your picture pop. Yes, the colors are extremely saturated, but you have handled the values extremely well and thus made it work .
Maybe it's just me, but I think it's worth experimenting with. Remember the old Tank Girl comics? The colors were really saturated, vivid and all over the place but boy did it work for that style. Similarly, this approach works really really well with your drawing style.
When I saw your thumbnail on the Facebook homepage it just jumped at me.And that' definitely something us illustrators strive for with editorial work.
Again, maybe it's just me, but I love it! :)
Thanks again Tin, that's high praise coming from you. While I agree with you I also recognize that you can be just as effective with a subtler more sophisticated and elegant palette it just depends on what your intent is. In this particular piece subtlety obviously had nothing to do with it.
And I do remember the old Tank Girl comics, I really enjoyed them.
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