When the team at Michael Roger, the publishers behind Decomposition Books, reached out to me to do a Scubadiving / Yoga mashup I was all over it. What follows is the creative process from concept to finished print.
*Special thanks to Eric and Jacob Held for the Art Direction
1.) Concept sketches: After talking through the key poses I worked up a few concepts that offered a variety of framing devices. In this phase I'll typically flip the drawing horizontally back and forth the check the compositional balance.
2.)Lineart: Once I had an approved concept sketch I moved on to create the lineart in Photoshop CC on my Surface Pro 3. Each diver and individual element was created as it's own layer in Photoshop for ease of manipulation. When I illustrate I typically doing my sketching in green and my lineart on a layer above in red. This helps me separate the two visually. And I just turn the sketch layer off once I'm done but I always keep it so I can reference back to it.
3.) Toning and Color: Once the lineart had been approved I drew in the shadows and created a toned inkwash using the Kyle Webster watercolor brushes. I then turned the wash layer into a halftone bitmap to create a zipatone look. Following that I overlayed the multiple layers and began to experiment with some hue and level adjustment layers to add color.
4.)Print: Although we experimented with color it was ultimately decided to go greyscale with the print. The trade dress was added and the cover went to print. Below are some samples from the print itself.
