It's been sometime since I had done an illustration for SooJin. When I got this email about this project I couldn't wait to get started. It seems lately kind of a competition in itself. With all of the fabulous talent in each publication. You really feel you need to do your best. But when it comes to start it's just going to be such a joy.... Where do you start I did the normal thirty plus thumbnails and she picked two directions she felt would fit. I thought the one that worked best was number 26. I thought I would play around with the feeling and design of the image in two separate directions. One in a more classical style, probably painted in gouache to get the feeling of it coming from the past. The second one digital, and using a very different pallette. Cool colors and warm lights. They each had a very different feeling about them, but the warm colors seemed to work the best.
I loved the concept of looking into the past to find direction toward the future. It seemed to mirror some of the work I had been doing the last few years... this idea of using clocks seemed obvious, but most of my concepts are... I felt the color was an important part of the concept so I took the time to work up a little color study to give SooJin and myself a better idea of what i was thinking.
I painted this little painting in gouache and certainly did a bit of tweaking to try to push that warm glow I was going for. The conversion to CMYK seemed to kill the color a bit. We tried many many variations trying to get that luminosity back, finally got the best we could.
I was very pleased with the way this came together. In some ways a perfect way to use a more classic style. The design and layout done by Cherese and Alanna at PlanSponsor were so elegant and tastefully put together... These Ladies are so good. Much thanks to all of the folks at PlanSponsor and to SooJin. Always such a joy to work on one of these!
Some Beautiful Type Design and spread from Cherese and Alanna and the design team at PlanSponsor/Strategic Insight...