Illustration Friday: Float

I like this one ok. Someone told me that they didn’t like the nostril and neither do I but…well, two things. I don’t like the word “nostril” at all and also, I do set myself a time limit when I do these Illustration Friday illustrations. I might go back and tinker with this one a bit more because I do agree, the whole face is pretty sketchy but I wanted to concentrate on the dandelion itself.

When I do these I try to keep the time to about an hour (on and off). I don’t just do the picture straight through, I make a few lines, do something else, come back to it. I also make an effort to use as few lines as possible and keep the image generally more suggestive than realistic. Adobe Illustrator is great for that kind of thing.

When I first started working in Illustrator, I worked with and artist who I think was named Boris (but it might have been Ivan). He did amazing illustrations with an absolute minimum of shapes and lines. But they were very clean, very clear and very beautiful. We worked on an astronomy book together (although I never met him and I don’t think I even spoke to him on the phone, it was all digital) and his illustrations were generally of people looking at constellations and they were amazing. In the back of my mind I have always strived to make my illustrations as simple and crisp as his.