Punk Rock Astronaut (concept process)

Hello everyone! Another busier than expected week. The deadlines are swarming, gnashing their horribly sharp teeth at me everytime I even hum the theme song from Skyrim or glance longingly at my stack of unread comics. But I shall prevail. I will crush them with the smoke and coffee stained calloused stumps that exist where my pour abusd hands used to reside. Not much to share from this weeks efforts yet. But I got a request for a pretty rad commission I figured I’ll bring y’all along for. A couple that I’ve spent some solid time tattooing happen to be really into collecting original art. Go figure eh? They asked if I’d be interested in a private commission for their collection, specifically for a spot in their kitchen/dining room.

They invited me over for beer and snacks and to check out their collection and the space in question. After chatting for a bit and looking over their super rad collection of big fricking paintings, I pulled out the iPad and opened Procreate. Sketching while talking to someone about the idea in question is something I’ve done for a long time, and while it’s really just a helpful way for me to get ideas out without over thinking them, folks seem to like it. This time though, due to The Technologies, I was able to take a picture of the area in question, and sketch right over it.

Punk rock astronaut walking a horse through an abandoned city. Sounds like a blast right? I typically work around the 11x17in, so getting a chance to work this large is super helpful exciting, especially after Darkness Day. But more of that later. So the next step is to flush out the rough. So I made a scale file in Procreate at 8x4in, and copies the rough over to it.

Now it’s time to tighten up. Being able to do this for right over the rough is really helpful. I know a lot of artists tend to do revisions and sketching out different options. @arseniclullaby does masterful little thumbnails before refining a concept to its peak point. It’s deliberate and calculated and wonderful. I, however, tend to go the opposite route when I can. I feel like my initial impulses are usually stronger than what I wind up with when I refine and revise. Sort of like my hands know better than my brain what people will respond to. Or more specifically, what I will respond to. I don’t sketch a whole lot because of it. I’d say a strong 90% of what I draw winds up seeing the light of day as a finished piece in some form or another. Granted, there are inevitably flaws. But I figure there will be regardless, better to get it out and on to the next one. It wasn’t always that way, but it’s became much more severe once I started freelancing. But I digress.

So now that I’ve tightened it up, I can drop out rough and there is a pretty good idea of what I’ve got in mind. Not overly specific, as I don’t want to promise anything I can’t deliver on, but refined enough to give the clients the notion that I have something solid to build on. Minus the color treatment, of course. That won’t come until we agree on the concept.

Also using Procreate, I can pop the image back into the photo of the room, which is super helpful for meetings like the one I have with them tomorrow.

So hopefully it goes well and I can start moving forward on this. It’s really calming to me, for some reason, to be using a fully digital process to prep and plan for a fully physical piece. Finding the balance betw en the to remains super important for me. I’m hoping to make a post early next week with some progress stuff from the live painting at Darkness Day, as well as updates about the meeting tomorrow. If y’all wanna hear more about it right away, make sure to tune in for The Illustrated Friends Live Podcast; a weekly live show we do all about nerd stuff and creating stuff and playing stuff. Good stuff. It’s starts little after 9pm (cst) at mixer.com/theillustratedfriends