Piggyback

Here's my latest illustration, one that I can happily say I'm quite pleased with; I can't always say that, and it's not that this is a masterpiece for the ages or the most exciting thing since sliced bread, it's just that I went out even farther on a limb with both my colouring technique and colour choices and found success (at least in terms of my own measurements). As with my previous corporate ladder illustration and recent experiment, I moved well away from a painterly style of colouring and went with one that uses flat colour areas to create shadows, depth, etc. With a photograph as a quick, initial reference, I was able to sketch, ink and colour this fairly rapidly (my colour selection probably took as long as everything else combined). I enjoyed the quicker pace of the colouring much more and increasingly feel like this is a creative path I've been searching for. It's still early days, but hopefully some more experimenting will help decide.

I inked and scanned the couple first in order to more easily separate them from the background for later tweaks. Here are the pencilled and inked versions:

        

And the final illustration:



I'd love to hear whether you love or hate this new direction.