Creating illustrations for me is a daily affair, but I've come to realize that the actual process of work remains a mystery to many people I've talked to. So, to try and demystify things, I've put together this page to explain how I created the illustration 'A Sobering Proposal' for Las Vegas weekly. Of course, every illustrator has their own way of working - all I'm showing is my way of going about things. I hope you enjoy it!

1. The phone call, the brief, and the concepts I normally get sought out by clients through the phone or mail. The first contact is usually very brief - sometimes I'm just asked if I am available to work on something to be delivered within a few days. Las Vegas Weekly contacted me over Christmas to ask if I could help them create a piece for an article in the New Year's edition of the magazine, about booze-free partying. After confirmation of the brief, budget and delivery date, I came up with some rough concepts. Some jobs don't require roughs, but I usually do them for magazine jobs. Roughs are quick ideas for layouts. The art director liked my suggestion to try something resembling a Chinese Revolution propaganda poster, so all the roughs revolved around this central idea. Right: 'Roughs' for the article. I provided 6 roughs in total, 3 are shown here.

2. The finished sketch The art director picked out the rough she liked best, and I then worked on a more finished sketch based on that. Sometimes there are changes, but fortunately not for this project. I encourage clients to confirm as many changes at the sketch stage. It’s usually a lot more difficult or impossible to correct things at the final artwork phase. Right: The final sketch, in blue pencil and graphite.

3. Rendering the artwork As a digital illustrator, I create almost all of my artwork on the computer using Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. I imported the sketch into Illustrator and created the artwork on top of it. It is very much like painting or drawing the old fashion way; individual portions are hand drawn and colors are picked out. It is convenient to have 'undo' at your fingertips though! If you are interested to see how I work in Illustrator, please check out my Livestream or Youtube channels. Right: A screenshot of my workspace in Illustrator

4. The final artwork Once the artwork was finished in Illustrator I brought it over to Photoshop for additional color tweaks and textures. For this picture the waves were drawn by hand with a brush pen. The final artwork was checked and a high-resolution file was prepared. The print-ready file was uploaded to my server and I sent the client a note to say the work is done. I gave a link to download the final file.

5. And it's done!
When the client got the work, I asked if they had any last minute corrections. If there are changes at this point, I have to figure out if I can do them easily; if I can, I get the changes done and resend the artwork. If I can't make a change easily I make sure to explain the situation carefully and offer a few solutions so that everyone is happy and more importantly, no one panics! At the end of the cycle, I sent an invoice and a thank-you email, then kicked back and waited to see the work in action!

Thanks to Las Vegas Weekly for allowing this piece to be used for the little demonstration.

Have more questions or suggestions? Please send me an email to let me know about it!