20 Oct 2009, Posted by matthewchilders in Illustrations, featured, 0 Comments

Knoxville Cancer Society Fundraiser Illustrations

About two years ago I was asked to do several illustrations for the Cancer Society fundraiser in Knoxville that was held at the Knoxville Museum. I was given a sample illustration that the art director on the account was looking at and liked. Using that as a launching point I dissected the style… looked at the timing needs as well as the budget and realized to do a traditional painting (which i really wanted to do) wasn’t feasible. It would require a much bigger and better scanner/and or extremely good photographs of the work for use in print if i painted the paintings.. and to get the line quality that i’d want I’d need to work fairly big which would again.. make scanning and or taking photos of the work time consuming or expensive. So I decided to do a mixed media approach. I did the line art in a traditional pen and ink method and then much like I would a comic.. i scanned in the work and painted the illustrations digitally in photoshop and painter. I experimented with different textures to add to the painterly feel of the piece. It was definately a good exercise in breaking down a style (something which I find myself fairly good at) and putting it back together with my own particular beats. I also was able to work fairly abstract…. something I’m not used to but which felt good otherwise.