1st Poster Progress

 

I started by doing the washy background with big water colour brushes and different hues of warm brown and orange colours, I also used a variety of splatter brushes on a lower opacity so they would look more like stains as they reveal the washy stroke behind them and also can layer up onto each other. Using the rough water colour painting I did of this design on a locked layer I started to make the outline with a black stroke using the pen tool on a separate layer above it. The final artwork won't have any outline so I am making this to use as a guide for my colouring and shading which could differ to the shape of the outline if I spot errors I want to change later with the shape of the colours. After finished the outline I locked the layer and made  new layer underneath and using the pen tool again I filled in the line art with my base colour which I will be shading on top of later. I then turned the preview off for the line art to get a basic idea of what it would look like without it, fixing any gaps between the shapes of colour which I couldn't see before. I've place the line art and colour for the hand and the mug on a separate layer in case I want to adjust the position or placement of the hand later as on the original sketch the mug was off centre which I didn't want.

I then started working on the shading of the neck and face using the line art as a guide but not following it completely as some parts of it were inaccurate to the look I was trying to create. I did my shading on a different layer to the base colours and I separated all the shading in different layer by sections or colours  so that I could easily make use of clipping masks and move them around if I needed to. I used my brushes on a very low opacity between 10% and 20% so that I can layer up the strokes and create a gradual change between the base colour, shading and highlights. When I am shading the strokes tend to go outside of the line art so I use clipping masks after in order to clean up the edges of the figure, making them look less messy.

  

When I finished the shading for the face I thought the head looked smaller in comparison to the body and looked slightly out of proportion Since I couldn't enlarge the size of the head due to the neck size being un changeable I decided to disguise it by enlarging the figure till the nose was cut out of the frame and the body took up most of the image, I also decided to add facial hair to give the jawline some slight extra width.

I then started working on the torso shading the grey vest with a big water colour brush on 30% opacity with a stroke between 6pt and 8pt. I used a bigger brush than I usually do to try and recreate the washy water colour style and defining the shape, form and creases of the jacket using only shadow and highlights and avoiding using any outlines. I then used the same technique, using big water colour brushes on low opacity to shade the rest of the torso such as the orange shirt and the tie all on separate layers, defining their shape with shadows and highlights.

On two separate layers I started doing the shading for the hand and the mug in the same washy water colour style using thick strokes of water colour brushes. I then also added a white swirly stroke on low opacity from the coffee to the face of the figure to look like steam or as if he's getting a whiff of the aroma. I also took the PDF of the artwork that was downloadable with the brief and thought it would look appropriate on the mug and also added some other part of the artwork from the packaging onto the poster such as little logos and symbols. The poster Is done at this point but I feel like something is missing such as typographic elements though I'm not sure how to use it so I will discuss it during crit feedback.