Balancing Speed and Quality

While I can't say what this piece is for, I can discuss it aesthetically. I suppose every illustrator has a moment in their life where they begin to value speed as much as quality, and that's pretty much how I approached this piece, with immediate decisions and an economic use of rendering and colour.

I became very daring with this one, entrusting myself to brushes and brush effects I normally never use, trying to lay down basic shapes in a deceptively simple way, and then refining things where needed. The effect is appealing in some parts, where the roughness adds atmosphere and expressivity, but I don't feel I've perfected being both fast and communicating the amount of detail that I like to cram into my work.

I also used the 'rough' approach to guide the eye a bit, having this areas of vague, painterly marks being moments of reprieve from the more complex forms. In any case, balancing speed and quality is a definite goal I have for future pieces.

Berkshire County: First Concept Art

This is the first of the concept pieces for the Canadian horror film Berkshire County. As you can probably guess, this is the film in which the 'pig masks' figure in.

I tried as best as I could to ensure that the inside of this dark place looked like a van, and that the scene, in spite of its low light level, had a good degree of colour. It was a different piece for me in general in one sense, because it involved an overall cooler palette and a far greater prominence of female figures, which for whatever reason have never come my way. In another sense, it's exactly like most of the jobs I get, which tend to involve horror, threat, death, and terror ... go figure. Other challenges for me were trying to nail skin tones and other colours in this sort of light level, as well as keeping my diagonals expressive without becoming a distraction.

The film is directed by Audrey Cumming, whom I know from my days of grinding on CFC projects.