Thursday, April 14, 2016

Digital Art: Sketchbook to Poster

by Kathy Garvey

I dabble with paint, but I thrive on digital art. My favorite way to relax is to bring up Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator and just play. The great thing about digital art is you can print it to fabric, posters, tiles, etc. The not so great thing is that it only really exists in your computer until you do print it. 

In hopes that there are some people who read our blog who are interested in digital art, I've assembled a few graphics that show my process - from sketchbook to poster. 

I do keep a sketchbook. When I have time to create, I usually start by scanning an idea from my sketchbook. These are often only a few inches in size, but I scale them up to 8x10 because that makes a great 16x20 poster. I then place the idea in Illustrator and start building the design. Sometimes I build in color, sometimes in black and white. But I always experiment a long time with color, gradients, patterns, blend modes and strokes in Illustrator. Once I'm happy with the idea in Illustrator, I can't wait to take it into Photoshop. Then it's even more fun to experiment with color, gradients, patterns, strokes and blend modes. And there it stays until I decide to print it to something!

In the three recent examples below, the left image is the sketch right from my sketchbook. The next image is about midway done in Illustrator. The third image is at the end of the time in Illustrator right before taking it into Photoshop. And the last image is the final image after time in Photoshop.
(Click on any image to enlarge it.)

If I Could Fly

Orchid Sketch

Flower Sketch

1 comment:

  1. I just love your illustrations Kathy. No matter how beautiful the original you are drawing somehow your illustrations are so much more.

    ReplyDelete

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