Here's a glimpse into the weekly world of the Slice of Life illustration that I draw for Michael Hodges in Time Out London....
Wednesday is article day, when I get his words via email...
In this one Hodges finds himself in a moment of beautiful calm in a fish and chip shop along the polluted pissy road near Waterloo Station (Time Out issue April 14 - 20 2011).
My initial idea was quickly scribbled out........ I was thinking along the lines of Edward Hopper's
Nighthawks painting, where the lit interior is isolated against the night closing in around. The article also reminded me of Charles Bukowski's
Nirvana poem. Anyway these were my first sketches, which I scanned into photoshop. The first one is before research into the restaurant...
... and this is after seeing the front, and the particular shape of windows and door....
I took the little window with Michael Hodges from the first, and placed it into the other drawing, then plopped it into a page layout to show how it will look on the page, coloured it roughly and emailed it off to Sim Greenaway (art editor) and Hodges to see what they thought... I usually do this thursday or friday ...
... they liked the idea, so next, in the night, I drew all the different parts, people, vehicles, smoke, urine, blind man, etc on paper, and scanned them, and composed the picture on screen. Each element being on a different layer. Its a bit of a fuss doing them in pieces, but it means that its more flexible, and I can adjust the position and scale of each bit to just how I want it (and to fit the layout if I do something awkward with the composition). Sometimes I do it more traditionally as one single drawing. It just depends on the picture. Normally I do these inks on a saturday evening.
Sunday is colouring night. Heres the final drawing as it appeared in the magazine, with ink textures and flat colour added. Warm and nice against the choking street swirl yuppie yah.
.... and here are my original scans. You can see there are lots of passengers squished into the bus that you don't see in the printed version, and more to the buildings like the curry restaurant next door. Some of the drawings were done in pencil first, then inked up, and some of the figures were probably done straight off in ink, but I can't remember. Note my QW signature also drawn separately so it could be placed artfully somewhere! The final coloured artwork is emailed in for first thing monday morning.
There, I think thats it. Big thanks to Mr Hodges for writing such wonderful and mad articles that are a pleasure to illustrate.
Any questions, please ask away!
