Red

This is a quick character design for a picture book about a girl with red hair, hand-drawn and scanned into Photoshop, then painted digitally. I had a lot of fun painting the hair, keeping the brush strokes messy and loose. Normally my style is a lot neater, which I’m learning is not necessarily a good thing – drawing ‘tightly’ is a learned habit from my animation days, where the lines had to be neat with consistent thickness, and had to ‘close up’ (i.e. join together with no gaps) to make the colouring process quicker. In illustration I’ve found that technique makes my work a little stilted and wooden. These days I’m opting for a looser, sketchier style that tries to capture movement in one pose, rather than ‘making’ the movement through animation. It’s not easy, and something I will continue to practice. For some great examples of using line to create movement, take a look at the work of illustrator Ann James – she is utterly brilliant.

The pencil outlines for this work were also not painted over in Photoshop (unlike Super Nova), but just strengthened and coloured using some Photoshop magic. I think it makes for a rougher but more appealing effect.