Illustration Friday: My Intentions With Food

Words and Art by David Finley. Photo by Nicole Finley

 I've been eating healthier lately and changing my relationship with food. I've even lost ten pounds over the last month and a half. As I've mentioned in previous articles, one of my stress coping mechanisms has been to take comfort in yummy delicious food. But, things in my life have calmed down enough for me to be a little more responsible in my eating choices.

 Of course, I've been taking the usual approach of eating more vegetables and fruits, monitoring my protein intake, and reducing my sugars, but this time around I wanted to be a bit more balanced. That means on most days, I eat more things like cauliflower and green beans while pizza and pasta wistfully wave to me in the distance, but I do indulge from time to time without guilt. It's not all about health food and deprivation, nor is it just about weight loss results.

Some Foods Don't Always Have the Best Intentions

 In the past, when I would decide to diet, it would involve a strict regimen of nutrition observation, carb + sugar reduction, and calorie monitoring. It worked really well and I would even shed ten pounds in as little as a week sometimes, which stomps the pants off of my current weight loss trends.

 I think, however, that approach is all very modern American. European countries like France, Greece, and Italy, although not perfect in dietary choices and health tend to have a more, for lack of a better term, "loving" relationship with their meals. The food isn't there for a quick thrill. There is a ritual of courtship, where time is taken to enjoy and respect the food for what it is, and meals are enjoyed more often at dinner tables than on sofas. 

 So, I've committed myself to eating good food. No more scarfing down a hotdog on the run without even tasting it. I am pledging myself to respect my food more, to exercise restraint, to put together meals with higher quality ingredients, and to slow down my meal times to better savor what is plated in front of me.

Thanks for reading! I would love to read any good recipes that anyone has. Also, if you haven't please consider following my Visual Art of David Finley Page on Facebook. There's a link to it on the right side of my page and of course, I would greatly appreciate it.

-Dave, Grand Poo-bah of Scofflaws

Tutorial: The Adventures of Punky and Bucket in Graffiti Land

Words and images by David Finley

Greetings, Scofflaws!

Today's post is a tutorial explaining my process in the creation of this piece below.

A little over a week ago, I posted an article depicting a scene from a parody of Mary Poppins I am writing. If you would like, you can look and see some concept sketches and visual development on the characters from that previous post by clicking, here.

Today, I am going to follow my article up with a series of images involving those same characters, and explain the process I use to establish the visual look for this story.

With this particular drawing, I sat down with my sketch book and some markers putting down the first thought that came into my head. I enjoy sharpies because they don't allow me much room for meticulous detail or careful planning. They are powerful and bullish on the page, often bleeding into the paper. I don't have to care that the resulting drawing is crude and ugly, as long as it does its job.

At this point, the drawing is not even close to being polished and I'm not completely happy with the body language of the characters, but it establishes the tone and humor I'm trying to convey.

I've added lines of action, which are imaginary guides that control the directional flow of the eye across the picture.  

In my reworking, I tighten up the body language of the characters. I want the robot to be more delighted, upright and alert with his lines of action pointing the viewer to the wall behind him. The cat has good southern-belle characterization in the sketch, but I want to draw her lines out further to add grace and elongate her body lines.

Here you can better see the directional flow the lines of action give the piece. They are positioned to lead the viewer's eye in a pattern of direction ending with the robot's cane.

Now it's time to open Adobe Illustrator to tighten up and "ink" the linework.

 

The result is much closer to my original vision. I've also redone the background. It is still seedy, but I've taken away the needle and trash to avoid stealing focus from the graffiti that will be placed on the wall behind the characters.

My result is cleaner, and slightly more dynamic. The lines used to render the characters and the water curve and flow diagonally, giving them a more kinetic and moving feel, while also contrasting with the heavy and stable vertical line of the pipe, and simple and at-rest horizontal line of the ground.

It is also important to mention line weight, or the thickness of the lines. Thicker lines will bounce toward the eye faster than thinner lines. Balance is key with this device. It is important to use both thin and thick lines to avoid visual monotony. Thicker lines should be used to anchor, while thinner lines are useful for detail, and contrast.

Power to the People.

 At this stage, I insert the graffiti into the background. It was a lot of fun to design and create this graffiti myself. Because the graffiti is so kinetic and visually active, we do have the unfortunate problem that it threatens to bury the main characters and steal focus.

I then change the color of the graffiti from black to blue, which helps, but doesn't totally fix the problem. We want some focus on the graffiti, because in a sense it is a character, too, but in it's current state, it is still a bit too powerful.

We'll try to fix that with some simple color and shading choices.

Very Gene Kelly.

You'll notice I've added a dialogue balloon to complete the punchline.

The first color treatment I apply is an analogous, or blue tone color treatment. I really like this look, and I am tempted to keep it. It creates an old fashioned, and nostalgic feel that aids in portraying the innocence of the characters, but the characters are still getting just a little lost.

I have added color to the foreground characters, but have retained the monochromatic treatment of the background elements. The blue background color scheme contrasts nicely with the oranges, and reds used on the characters.

 So, there you have it. The result is clean, and dynamic with nice color contrasts. I would still like to find a way to use the monochromatic color scheme, but this is just a concept drawing and there is a lot of room to shift..

Thanks for reading!

Journey on the Yoo Hoo Sea

 Journey across the Yoo Hoo Sea with scope in hand, while the unicorns gaze perching atop the chocolate sundae mountains.

Lines in Illustrator with colors in Photoshop.

Thanks for looking!

Run You Fool Version 2

I've often said that I wanted to redo a lot of my old cat and robot pieces. Here, I've finally realized it. This is a completely redone version of an old piece that you can see in this old post by clicking here.

I like the redo, although I'm not completely sold on the dog. I'll try to get a color version of this up soon.

The Legend of Zelda- Doodles of Link

The Legend of Zelda is one of my favorite all time video game series out there, with my favorite chapters being Wind Waker, and Link to the Past. Here are some doodles done in homage to many hours of adventure and entertainment. Yay Link!

 Thank you Nintendo, for making my childhood a bit more entertaining.

The Bear Who Hated His Job: The Missing Pages Part II

Here's another page from my tale of dissatisfaction. This was supposed to be the splash page where a grizzled man tells two young children in a museum a story about a circus bear.


It took me a while before I was happy with the colors, and I'm still not entirely happy with the bear "painting" on the left. When I redo this story I think I might not use color at all, unless it's very basic.

Thanks for looking. Comments are welcomed and appreciated.