Illustration, photography, and all-around geekery
I’ve been working on this one for about a week on and off. I outlined the letters in Illustrator, then moved to Procreate on the iPad to draw the flowers and foliage. It went through a lot of iterations before it started coming together. An earlier screenshot:
The behavior of our nation is disheartening, to say the least, so this is my response; trying to make lemonade from lemons.
I’ve had this concept floating around in my head for months. I eventually came up with this, which I like:
But I’ve had a rainbow version of the above stubby-legged pony saved as a draft ever since. I came back to it last week, and, armed with some of my newly practiced lettering skills, tried my hand at it again.
This one has a bit more of the color and sense of movement I was looking for.
An update on my self-punishment: I gave up on trying to color the interior of every element and went with the ones that were already mostly enclosed, leaving the rest to line art. The result, in three colorways:
Sometimes I get really caught up in making a pattern and adding all these little details…so much so that I forget I’m going to have to color it later. This is one of those times. 🙃
I’m conferencing in Boston this week, so there’s not much time for drawing. I’m working around that by sketching rough notes for each of the sessions. In the meantime, here are some random doodles from the last few weeks, in no particular order.
I’m still not quite satisfied with this one, but I’m tired of staring at it, so I’m putting it up for now. I really like the letter shapes for “Mulder”, though.
Originally I thought I’d borrow from another one of my drawings for Scully’s profile. I’m not great at drawing faces; I’d probably get better with practice, but that’s not where my interest lies right now.
So I half traced, half drew her from reference (photo below). It’s funny how one tiny detail being slightly “off” can make an otherwise normal-looking face just plain wrong. I went in and fiddled around with her eyes as I was writing this.
If you look past the series’ staples — “The truth is out there”, “Trust no one,” “I want to believe” — you can’t get any more classic X-Files than this.
This weird show about aliens that no one thought would amount to anything spanned eleven seasons and two movies, and this quote started it all.
“Sorry…nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted.”
OK, so technically there was some dialog before that, I guess — something with men in gray suits, blah blah blah — but the first Mulder/Scully interaction is where it’s at. She walks into that basement office, he tries to be snarky and fails (because Dana Katherine Scully, MD, is Not. Taking. His. Shit. from day 1, so brilliant) and…the adventure begins.
It’s perfection. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch the pilot episode. Again.
X-Files quotes make great lettering fodder. I’m working on a different quote from the pilot episode right now, but this came together quickly in the meantime.
I’m not a fan of “good vibes only”. Sometimes, I really enjoy a good grump. Or cry. Or any of the myriad emotions we human beings and our funky brains bring to the table.
This went through several iterations before I settled on the current version. I liked the hippy-ness of the wavy letters with an almost bell-bottom-like flair.
