All rides have been canceled due to the continuing deluge we are calling weather in Northern California. So we are snuggled in the house, my husband forced to do his workout indoors and I am trying to take advantage of having husband and daughter entertain the little one while I try to work on a new design I have been wanting to do for a while. Since we don't have a ride to blog about we thought it may interest some folks to know the process I go through to make some of my graphics. So here we go, a quasi-step-by-step.
I was trying to think up a design that was a bit edgier than what I usually do. I know a lot of mountain bike and cyclocross (and yes, some roadies too) that are pretty hard-core in their riding and I wanted to reflect that in a design. I also wanted to do something that would appeal to women that wasn't like all the girly stuff I see around. There are some very intense female riders out there as well. I thought of someone "riding like the devil" and thus the idea was born. First I did a concept sketch. Just a quick scribble to capture the idea and the over-all feel of what I wanted to do. I wrote down a few possibles "slogans" to go with and then it was time to move on to a getting the actual image started.
I needed to get an accurate representation of a bike so my husband brought his Bontrager in for me to photograph from several angles. The original sketch had been a road bike but I decided that I was going to do a "Speed Demon" graphic and that would be better suited to a road bike so I decided to use "Ride With The Devil" for a mountain bike themed design. (Just trying to cover all of my bases. Yes, a cyclocross design is coming too.)
To get the bike sketched I needed to print out and trace over the picture so that I could build my devil figure around it. My old light table (a converted beer sign that I had scrounged) finally bit it a while back and I wasn't able to use a window because the skies are so dark so my daughter decided to help me out by building me a light table with legos, a plastic document holder and a little tap light.
Once I have the bike traced I am ready to sketch in my figure. Trying to find a safe place to do that where my toddler won't steal my pencils is always a challenge.
To get a clean sketch I will actually do several sketches. I use a basic HB sketching pencil and some Staedtler technical pens. I had a great coupon for Michaels' so I actually broke down and bought a small pad of transluent marker paper to help reduce ink bleeding. A lot of my initial sketching is done on cheap computer printer paper. (Art paper is expensive and I like to do several runs at the same image to be sure I have a clean image that I like.)
I will trace over the first sketch, redefining the lines, figuring out what works best until I am ready to do a pen and ink image that I will be able to scan into Photoshop. By this time my right index finger is bright red and deeply indented and it's been several hours of sketching, erasing, tracing and retracing. Once I get an image clean enough for a final ink I get it ready for the scanner.
Once I scan the image in, there is a ton of clean-up that has to be done. Then I begin copying sections so that I can pull them out into a new layer and color them individually. I usually save several versions as I go and the layers give me a lot of flexibility and insurance against my own stupidity (and if you saw how many layers I use you could see that I can be pretty darned dumb at times.) Once I have everything colored I begin playing with the text. Nice blood red lettering in a rough, almost tribal font seems to go well with the graphic. Viola! Only ten intense hours later (my husband had to force me to eat lunch which I did at the computer while working) and a lot of juice through the iPod and you can see the final image below.
(In case you were wondering about the song list for this particular graphic, it included: "The Game Has Changed" by Daft Punk, "Our Solemn Hour" by Within Temptation, "Undisclosed Desires" by Muse, "More Human Than Human" by Rob Zombie, "Castle in the Sky" by DJ Satomi, "Haunted" by Evanescence, "King of the Dancehall" by Beenie Man, "Bloodletting" by Concrete Blonde and "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.)
Once I scan the image in, there is a ton of clean-up that has to be done. Then I begin copying sections so that I can pull them out into a new layer and color them individually. I usually save several versions as I go and the layers give me a lot of flexibility and insurance against my own stupidity (and if you saw how many layers I use you could see that I can be pretty darned dumb at times.) Once I have everything colored I begin playing with the text. Nice blood red lettering in a rough, almost tribal font seems to go well with the graphic. Viola! Only ten intense hours later (my husband had to force me to eat lunch which I did at the computer while working) and a lot of juice through the iPod and you can see the final image below.
(In case you were wondering about the song list for this particular graphic, it included: "The Game Has Changed" by Daft Punk, "Our Solemn Hour" by Within Temptation, "Undisclosed Desires" by Muse, "More Human Than Human" by Rob Zombie, "Castle in the Sky" by DJ Satomi, "Haunted" by Evanescence, "King of the Dancehall" by Beenie Man, "Bloodletting" by Concrete Blonde and "Red Right Hand" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.)
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| Sketching the figure over the bike. |
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| The inking process begins. You can see that we ditched the tail in the final. |
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| The coloring process in Photoshop begins. I usually end up with about 60 - 70 layers and seriously dry eyes by the time it's done. |
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| The final graphic, ready to be used. My favorite part is the opponent's jersey clutched in her right claw. |
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