Fresh Flowers from the Farm
Fresh Flowers from the Farm. Click to enlarge.
Having lived in Lancaster for 10 years, I have always known that Central Market is the beating heart of the downtown. Cheerful and loud, proud and locally sourced: it’s a great place to grab a bite, shop for groceries, take visiting relatives, and delight in all things Lancaster.
Unfortunately, I have never taken a good picture there in my life. It’s like my Bermuda Triangle in terms of photography. I have tried different times of the day, different times of the year, different subjects, etc., but I've never taken that one image that I'm really excited about.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t accrued some good source material over the years. And by source material, I mean photos that fall short of being a good photograph because of lighting, distracting backgrounds, etc., but are excellent foundations for one of my illustrations.
Check out the video of my creative process!
Lessons Learned
I try to approach each illustration as a learning experience and unfailingly, the creative process has led me down paths that have been challenging and rewarding. I have included some of the lessons I have learned and some of the lessons that I have to keep reminding myself.
Click to enlarge for a closer look at my mood board.
1. Compile a mood board
It's a great way to brainstorm, test things out, and keep organized. With illustrations this complex, I usually make my mood board as I go and a keep folder full of references and supplemental photos for details and mood.
2. Create some depth of field
I knew I wanted to do some kind of brick background, but I realized pretty quickly that the florist in front of a brick wall looked flat and uninteresting. So I added the table for the florist to stand behind, a stool directly behind her, and the entrance to Central Market in the background. Without those elements, the illustration would look two-dimensional and kind of boring.
3. Automation isn’t always the solution
I started off trying to build my brick wall by using the pattern tool but the end result looked too uniform and flat. I ended up hand-drawing the bricks to give each one a unique and distinct feel.
Likewise with the flowers, I started off making the petals all one color and the same shape. But only by making the shapes of the petals a little different and using tones of color and shading, did the flowers feel look more alive.
4. Do your research
Halfway through the illustration, I reached an impasse, I wasn't sure what to do with the backdrop or the foreground. Instead of continuing to hit my head against the wall, I decided I would take a field trip back to Central Market and the flower stand to get another look around. I bought some flowers which they wrapped in red tissue paper, which gave me the idea of using tissue paper as a detail in the scene. It also gave me the idea of placing a table in front of the florist so that I could elevate some of the vases of flowers and add some height.
5. Waste Some Time
It’s good for you. Watch a Youtube Tutorial, try a new technique, change the colors– alot. I guarantee you that you won’t use everything that you create. But it will give you creative options for your current work and good practice for projects to come.
6. It will never be perfect
Obviously, you want to get it 90% of the way there, but that last 10%? Let it go– it's just going to force you to move deadlines and give you wrinkles around your eyes.
I hope you enjoyed Fresh Flowers from the Farm. You can check out some of my other illustrations below.
The Creative Process (Just Shoot Me)
Last month, I stopped at Central Market in Lancaster to pick up some some treats and candy for my family before heading home for the weekend... Continue Reading
Last month, I stopped at Central Market in Lancaster to pick up some some treats and candy for my family before heading home for the weekend. It was a cool, rainy day in April, the beginning of spring. I knew I wanted to pick up some Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Eggs from The Candy Stand for my mom, Shoofly pie from Wendy Jo’s for my dad, Black Peppercorn cheese from S. Clyde Weaver’s for me, and some Stroopies from Lancaster County Stroopies/ Amish Family Recipes for my sister; my definition of a good morning.
Of course I brought my camera along out of habit. The weather was less than ideal and I was in a hurry, but I knew better than to leave it at home; a classic just-in-case scenario. I was walking quickly into market, the dark sky intermittently spitting rain, when I saw two girls walking down the alleyway with totes, baskets, and umbrellas in hand. Instinctively, I snapped their picture, admiring the composition of the scene more than anything else. Otherwise, the colors were muted and dark, there were tons of extraneous and distracting details in the shot, no detail in the sky and I managed to get a few raindrops on my lens. In short, it was a crap photo.
See the slideshow below to check out the full creative process.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later when I was fiddling around in Lightroom that I came across the shot again. Yup, just as horrible as I remembered except for the composition…. except maybe this wasn’t a throwaway shot, maybe it was a salvage mission. This crappy photograph could be the base of a really cool illustration that I could turn out pretty quickly, or so I thought.
Fast forward four weeks later. The temperature has reached into the eighties, the flower petals are raining down with every gust of wind, and I have finally, finally finished this illustration, thank ye Gods! But after working and staring at this project to the point of burning in it my retinas, just showing you the “Ta-da!” end result seems kind of anticlimactic. Let us revel instead, if you will, in the insane amount of time and attention I have devoted to Rainy Market Day. If only I had spent more time on the title.
For those of you who listen to director commentaries or take the behind the scene tours, this is your lucky day. Continue reading below for the story behind the illustration, Rainy Market Day. I know you want to!
1. The Details: I used Illustrator for the bulk of my design, 90% roughly. My first concern were the details: the bricks in the building, the cobblestones, the rooftops, etc. Ultimately, I decided to stick with the detail in the cobblestone and just use solid colors, gradients and architectural details for the buildings. I wanted the piece to have some texture and depth to it, but I didn’t want the background to feel cluttered or distract from my focal point. Besides which, it would have taken forever! An important part of design are deadlines and time constraints, otherwise designers would work and improve on things for years.
2. The Colors: I realized when I was selecting colors for the background, they were pretty monochromatic. A lot of brown, tan, grays, muted reds. So I knew that I wanted to the make the women, with their the umbrellas, the focal point of the entire piece and adding some spring colors to their parcels, accessories, clothes was a no brainer. I picked yellows, blues, purples, and greens as their color pallet to reference spring and remind the viewer that rainy days give way to blue and sky and tulips and lush green grass, etc.
3. The Women: As for the actual women, I wanted to create characters that looked real in the space. I could have easily found some model shot to use as a reference point, with a cinched waist, flared collar, and high heels, but I wanted to maintain the integrity of the original photograph and the spirit of the illustration which is authentic to Lancaster.
4. The Texture: So for the background texture, I wanted add some energy to the piece and also reference the rain, and general grossness of the day. So I took my completed illustration into Photoshop and using watercolor brushes, created the background. I also really liked the contrast between the soft lines of the watercolor and the unsparing lines of the illustration.
5. The Text and Borders: Finally. I wanted to add a border, something that suited and complimented the illustration without being distracting. My mom is taking a stained glass class right now, and the idea for creating stained glass board germinated from a couple of conversations with her involving her class. Thanks Mom!
I pulled the text from one of the women’s bags. I wanted to keep the “love local” detail because that is sooo Lancaster and the spirit of Central Market, but I wanted it to pop a little bit more. So I pulled it off the bag and essentially added it as a caption, to the top of the illustration. I used a cursive font to keep with the hand-drawn effect.
Ta-Da! This illustration will be for sale in the near future.
Thanks for reading!
