Illustration

Ah yes, it’s Halloween season and a couple weeks ago during another moonlit working session, I altered the backgrounds and colors of my website on a whim for the season. Traditionally, I think of oranges for Halloween, or fearful greens, but for the site, they didn’t evoke the desired effect (and together they remind me more of a carrot). Thus, I arrived at the blood red and stark whites against the grey, which fit also with the mailer idea I was working on.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to complete the mailer this year in time to produce and send it. I suppose that considering I was delayed in my efforts with paying work, the immediate need for a mailer doesn’t seem to be present. I still think, though, that when business is good, it’s still time for self-promo, both to advance as well as to keep business flowing.

Some time ago, a concept of a moontanning vampire stuck in my head and I adapted that to a card idea playing off a traditional holiday or vacation card which relate sunny days, beaches, and such. In the Halloween vacation card, the moon replaces the sun, and a pale vampire enjoys a sanguine drink on the beach, his reflection absent from the water, of course. I’ve had the correlation pointed out to me, as lately (the past couple decades), I have a natural inclination to be most active at night, though I don’t think that’s terribly uncommon with designers and illustrators.

Yes, it’s been two months since my last blog. Although there has been plenty of work going on, there’s much that’s still in process and accordingly I’m not able to blog about those project, fun as they are. I did get to do some quick illustrations (one afternoon) for a tag associated with some t-shirts Omniture distributed at a BYU game. The plan was, of course, to get everyone to put them on with the reward of prizes, so for the tags the thought was aiming for the kind of drawings typically seen in airplane safety instructions. Originally I went with the parted plastic hair I usually associate with schematics from a few decades ago, but apparently that was a bit too nerdy.

At the beginning of the month, I was in the Victoria and visited the Royal British Columbia Musuem and particularly enjoyed the First Nations Gallery. Strong graphic quality to a lot of the masks, carvings, and drawings that I’d like to look into more. I like the sparing use of color and the play of organic shapes. Some items struck me as reminiscent of Mayan designs. There were also a couple interesting galleries in Seattle with current artists’ designs that I’m glad I saw. Last May when visiting the Met, I was glad to have made a point of spending more time in the African, American, and Pacific art sections.

Today I received a few emails notifying me of the approaching release of Adobe Creative Suite 4. Seems like all to recently I upgraded to 3. I have to wonder if new releases come around too often forcing everyone to upgrade to maintain compatibility with each other just for a version with a slightly new UI and minor buttons. There’s even been a couple times when some functions are more complicated in newer versions. Not that I’m making any particular total conclusion here, new stuff is always nice, but I have to ask if a minor upgrade every two years is more waste and hassle than progress.

I’ve been checking out the Communication Arts Illustration Annual and discussing it friends and associates. As I was relating to a friend this evening, I’m particularly noticing techniques involving stylized realism. My buddy Brad was pointing out Jim Salvati as a point between impressionism and photorealism that he likes, and I agreed by noting the work of Greg Manchess. Although I have always enjoyed Tim O’Brien whose work I’d say is fairly photorealistic. In contrast to those, there’s more distorted styles in the narrative vein such as Jack Unruh and Jody Hewgill that I’ll notice in so many issues. There’s always so much to take in and I’ll likely notice new things for different reasons on another read.

This issue struck me as having more weight on narratives and broadly realistic approaches than I’ve seen in issues in recent years. I could be wrong, but there appeared to be a bit of a broader spectrum rather than a heavy focus on highly political editorials and plethora of naive styles that I often see in design periodicals. Sometimes it seems that there’s a bit too much focus on anger and politics, and while those themes need to be communicated, they aren’t the only things to convey.

I was also discussing with Brad some of the artists I was looking at in New York this last month. The J.C. Leyendecker show at the Society of Illustrators was definitely worth the time. There were a couple pieces there that called to mind some sketches of Dean Cornwell. Thinking of the way I sketch the figure, I’m probably drawn to the the deco-style adaptations. I like the way that Leyendecker streamlines organic shapes and how, even with paint, there’s a certain kind of cross-hatching.

It’s been a busy month. Work at Omniture has been centered on Summit, a fairly intense time for them. Frequently, people have been out of the office for Summit. It was an odd feeling going in to Omniture and being the one of the few people in the section of the building during the Salt Lake Summit. My contract there just finished this week and I’m looking forward to working with them again next quarter. The last major piece I worked on was a collaboration with Steve Gustavson for the annual report cover. The Omniture style makes an interesting challenge to design with two colors, one font family, and no photography.

Between work with Omniture, I’ve had some other small freelance jobs and have also been working again with Venafi on a couple of larger projects. I feel the increasing shift toward the corporate and technologies.

I was hoping again to balance out all the corporate design work and have pieces ready for the Communication Arts Illustration Annual, but despite their annual practice of moving the deadline back a couple times, the month was full enough with freelance projects to be able to do a satisfactory piece. I suppose that if work is that busy that I shouldn’t be needing to advertise for more just yet. Still, it’s always good to have as many options as possible.

Here’s a simple sketch I was working on a few days ago, just added some simple color in Photoshop. I’m finding that I often have a great deal of anxiety about starting an illustration project, even a sketch, but that once begun, it’s easy to be focused and just go with it. That seems like another good reason to be sketching more often, when I have the opportunity.

This last month, my friend Justin Kunz was kind enough to refer me to Elias Akinaka, of Hui No Ke Ola Pono in Maui. Elias was really good to design for and had an interesting project for the native Hawaiian health organization that he works for. He asked me to design some traditional Hawaiian patterns for bandages as well as a simple illustration to promote healthy lifestyles. It was educational to work out the specific native details.

Being the Christmas holidays, my brother was in town, which makes for many opportunities for talking shop. My father Richard, brother Thomas, brother-in-law John Jensen, best friend Brad McCall, and I all have a background in design. Tom just received an invite to judge the Communication Arts photography annual.

Fortunately, the past couple months have been fairly busy. From early August, I’ve had a continual stream of freelance work and other opportunities to investigate. Curtis Packer at Venafi has been a very good client to work with, (icon samples above), and I’m looking forward to working more with him in future.

I also received a call from Becton Loveless at NutraSanus, who I’ve done freelance for off and on over the past couple years, and there’s the possibility of some continuing projects there.

Another referral out of the blue came from Chip Haskell at Crowell Advertising. I anticipate some good business relationships there. They have some really great offices at the Gateway in Salt Lake. Chip also said he enjoys maps and astronomy– that’s a bonus. Always nice if you can work with someone with similar interests.

Brad Pamer also contacted me about potentially collaborating on projects that he has, some of which are former clients of the now defunct Indigo Creative. We even talked about the possibility (however fanciful) of a virtual studio (called Indigo Orange, of course) of our former collaborators at Indigo Creative. I was surprised that our website is still up, but, as Brad explained, he owns the URL and pays for the hosting– the owner of Excel and Indigo never reimbursed him for those expenses. I also saw Michael Hancock the other night and am pleased that he’s doing well. We talked about freelance work versus full-time work. He says he’s in a good place right now with the freelance. I have to admit, it’s nice when you have enough work to sustain you and can have your schedule to yourself.

Unfortunately, with many things occupying my time, I didn’t complete a piece to submit for the Society of Illustrators annual. I’m hoping that my dad, Richard Hull, enters some of his pieces that he did for a current exhibition at Brigham Young University. He mentored a group of students a year and a half ago in Ghana and this month they’re showing pieces inspired by their time there.

I’m off today to Asia for two weeks, and I’m already anticipating all there is to follow up on at the start of November.

Last week I enjoyed a trip to northern California with faculty and animation students from Brigham Young University. In contrast to other such trips I’ve been on, we visited very few studios and museums, rather, we spent a lot of time stopping off at sites along the way to San Francisco and in the city to sketch and paint. I’m finding that while I have limitations in sketching from life rather than from scrap, I’m not quite as limited as I may think I am, and as with everything, it’s only a matter of practice. Even still, I took a lot of photos (never as many as I think at the time) for later resources.

We did visit Pixar, and while I’m not an animator, the experience was still enjoyable. Aesthetic rules still apply, of course, whether in animation or traditional illustration. I also have to admit that I enjoyed the workspace– open and full of light, with a large atrium purposefully designed such that everyone has to go through it to get around the building, with the intention that employees from different areas will interact often and therefore not become isolated.

For me, interacting with other creatives increases energy for projects and fuels ideas. Who progresses alone? Aside from the students that went, the three faculty comprised of one of my professors when I was in school; one that was a co-worker and pier at that time also, Peter Sakievich; and a new acquaintence, Ryan Woodward.

Here is a sampling of sketches I’ve been working on lately while developing concepts and designs of more involved projects.

Some time ago Jon Bybee, a college classmate of mine, called me up to say that he liked the bugs posted on my site and asked me if I was interested in submitting a few for a business he’s a partner in called Scribble on Walls.

I knew of the website via a blog which I’d read and had jokingly made the comment that the idea of wall art reminded me of scrapbooking paper for your room. Not that that’s a bad thing of course. High-end scrapbooking paper, as Jon said. I’m interested to see that business progress and ought to spend more time looking at what other designers and illustrators have posted.

So here are a few more bugs to pin and label in my portfolio:

After four years of watching deadlines for the Communication Arts Illustration Annual come and go, I finally carved out the time to have a completed piece finished for submission.

I’ve often wondered why the deadline for submission is postponed a week (usually twice) every year. Perhaps Communication Arts understand the nature of designers and illustrators to know that extended deadlines for a competition are greatly welcomed in the face of freelance and day jobs.

Being the astronomy geek that I am, I always like the idea that there are so many different frames of reference for what is up. The most local having the horizon of the observer as the equator and the poles being the zenith and nadir. Out from that, there’s the celestial grid, which simply extends the planetary coordinates out into space, the ecliptic grid which establishes the plane of Earth’s orbit as the equator. Our solar system orbits nearly perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy, and our galaxy is again skewed against the superglactic reference grid. All that rambling aside, I composed an illustration where the local horizon was not horizontal as it might not be from an outside observer, and ‘down’ could be an endless depth of sky beyond the feet of a figure doing a handstand.

Now I wonder if the above description even makes sense. It’s been a few late nights working on the illustration. Good, though, as it proves that I can actually light a fire to get a project finished within a few days once I can get the idea established and scrap shot.

After spending many years working as a graphic designer, I’m finding that developing a new illustration portfolio means re-learning my technique. Time to be doing many studies and plenty of failed illustrations, I’m sure, but hopefully every failed illustration brings me closer to something work marketing.

Right now, I’m attempting watercolor and acryllic over the graphite sketches that I enjoy doing. The trick is, not to overpower the sketch, but to build the color appropriately.

As a side note, I’m finding there’s more of a difference than I’d like between what I actually paint, and what the scanner interprets. Someday– a new scanner (not to mention new computer, new software, new house, etc.). That’s where having the new portfolio comes in. Hopefully it starts with that.