After the painting is completed, I scan it in and adjust in photoshop (my style is kind of grungy and I can correct little mistakes a bit this way). This also allows me to send you the final digitally, so it’s easy for you to just plop it down into your layout.

Hopefully you love it, and you email back to say so. And then I’ll send you an invoice. And after it’s in your layout and officially printed, you’ll send me some tearsheets. (Sharing!) And we’re done. You then reflect on how nice was to work with an illustrator and get another creative mind on the problem. And I reflect on how your good design helps the illustration look great (and in turn, you look great… and more importantly: your client looks great). And then I go back to drinking my coffee.

The End. (See? Wasn’t that fun?)

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So I emailed you my sketch ideas and gave you my rationale behind them. (Being an illustrator doesn’t mean I just paint pretty pictures… I also need to help you communicate the idea and solve the problem visually. And, at the same time, draw a viewer in by the image. It’s not that difficult, but this illustration needs to pull a lot of weight.)

You looked over the sketches and discussed them with your partner or editor and then got back to me with your choice, and any changes you think would strengthen the image. And I am happy you picked one (hopefully it was my favorite of the bunch) and we move on to the final. This is where I get to paint and be messy and play with color (my favorite part).

For my illustrations, I stick really closely to the approved sketch. I do this because I don’t want to surprise you with something unexpected that leads to you being unsatisfied with the illustration or require tons of changes. And I want you to know what to expect when you hire me back for future projects (you’ll do that, right?… ?cause I’m so nice…)

So here are finals for the sketches in the previous posts:

On to the last phase.
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After I do some extremely loose sketches to jot down and work out ideas, I can see that some of them have legs and others are total floppers. The ones with legs (doesn’t that sound insect-like?) get a more formal sketch… more thought-out composition, etc. Maybe you sent me an initial layout pdf… I love it when I get these because it allows me to put my sketch into context and think about how the type will fit around the image. Being from a design background, I like to design my illustrations to the allow the reader’s eye to move smoothly around the layout.

Like this (see how I have the hummingbird directing you to read the title?):

So finally I email about 2 or 3 tight sketches to you. (I like to work it all out in the sketch stage and have fun painting, but other illustrators give really loose sketches and then transform it in the final stage.)

Here are tighter sketches from the roughs shown in the previous post:

We’ll continue in my next post.

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So we’d love to work with you. Pleasantries and ideas have been exchanged and all the job order stuff has been filled out (?cause we both need stuff in writing, even though we’re friends). You send me (can I just talk like it’s me you’ve chosen to work with? So much easier…) the story or the job brief and we settle on a sketch due date.

Then it’s my problem. I read everything over and let it marinate in my brain for a day or two, if the timeline allows, until small ideas start popping up. Below are a few of my very very loose sketches that I start with. (Note: you’ll never see these… you’ll find out why later in my story.)

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I am not scary. I promise.

I started off my career as a designer at an ad agency and I was a little intimidated by illustrators at first. (Should I admit that?) I guess it was mainly because I was so green, but I didn’t know the first thing about how to work with an illustrator, even though I was used to living with their work (in magazines, on tv, book covers, etc). So I waded into my first project with an illustrator very slowly… and luckily she was nice and walked me through it. (Thank you Sandra, wherever you are!)

So now that I have switched over to the other side, I’d like to speak for my fellow illustrators and say “Hello, I’m here to work with you.” WITH you. Like, collaboration and building on each other’s ideas. And it’s so much fun! (not scary)

I’m happy to be a guest blogger here on Notes on Design and I’d love to be that illustrator who walks you through it (if this is your first time). Here we go… (more…)