The Family (#14)

The Family. A bunch of scary-assed redheads from hell.

• Skullbones – The youngest brother… dyes his beard black but keeps it ginger on top
• Bob – The eldest brother… loves disco, and knuckledusters. Dyes his fro black but keeps the stubble red so it hides the blood.
• Sheryl – The sister. The meanest of the lot. Dyes her hair black but lets the red show through.
  

A little departure from the style of the earlier ‘One a Day’s’ in that I used the pen tool in Illustrator for the clipping masks (beard and hair highlights). The rest of the head, hair and text were freehand with the paintbrush tool. The character Skullbones resembles a character I had drawn before so I got him done quicky but the other two were completely new. Needless to say this one took longer than the regular 20 minute time limit (around 45 minutes) and honestly, when I have the time I’ll spend a little more time on tidying up each illustration from now on and push the time out to 30 minutes or so. It’s great to give yourself a time limit as I tend to over do things when I don’t restrict myself, although there are pieces of the other illustrations I’d tighten up given the chance. The redhead-ness of the family was only decided on before I exported the AI file to jpeg… I think it worked out pretty cool!

Just a note on the process of the ‘One a Day’ Project, while the illustrations are completed within 20 minutes, I do spend a bit of time before hand (in the shower, on the bike or in the bed) thinking about subjects and setting things out in my mind like style, colour etc. White Winter Hymnal is the exception to this rule as what I wanted to do was an owl which didn’t work (and ended up being yesterday’s piece).

In the next few days I’m going to video my screen and “try” to do a running commentary while I draw a ‘One a Day’ illustration so you can get an idea of how I go about it.