The Book Lady - Savannah GA

The latest Electric Keychain project is aimed towards small/local businesses. We could pick absolutely anything and I picked one of my favourite places in Savannah, The Book Lady.

 

I was very impressed the first time I visited The Book Lady. Before this, I'd only ever visited one used book store in Costa Rica, and while that was impressive, this was even more so. The stacks of books practically tower over you. It REALLY did look like your stereotypical, fairy tale bookstore. Brown tones, soft lights, brick walls, chimney, cozy sofas, so many books packed in spaces so tight that you may not be able to pass through, a soft note of old paper lingering in the air and an undisturbed silence.

But the most impressive part is that staircase at the back of the store. I've often wondered, when was the last time it was a functioning staircase (rather than a stepped bookcase?) How long have those books been there? Does any one person know exactly which books are on each step? Who lives on the top floor? Did the books populate it up until the top story tenants had no choice but to relinquish the staircase to the books?

For this piece, I'll share some of my technique/process with you.

Lately when people ask me how my illustrations are made, no matter how much I explain it, a lot of people still don't fully understand it. So I figured I'd share my process in depth. But essentially, it's as simple as: drawing, scanning, and colouring digitally.

Preface: Thumbnail.

This is my gigantified thumbnail, which I vaguely traced it onto the final piece of paper. I could have done it by eye but I prefer magnifying the thumbnail (it was originally about 3" tall) since it keeps the original proportions I had intended. If this had been work for a professional purpose, I would have made a refined comp sketch instead of going straight to the final drawing, but since it was more of a personal project and I knew exactly what I wanted, I just went straight to the final drawing.

Step 1 and 2: Line drawing and values.

Ideally I would have taken a picture of the line drawing and THEN a picture of the values but it only occurred to me to share the process after I had half the values done. I will make note of this for future "process" posts.

Step 3: Scanning and cleaning. 

Once the values are done, I scan the drawing, also at a magnified size since I prefer to work small but the print size needs to be larger. Then, I clean the scan on Photoshop since there may be parts I couldn't erase entirely, dust from the scanner, etc. 

Step 4: Photoshop - Flatting?

I am borrowing the term "flatting" from comic artists, who apparently do this a lot. You grab whatever colours and fill in the spaces where different colours are supposed to go, all in different layers in Photoshop. So at this point it looks like a piñata explosion, but the colours don't really matter, all that matters is to have each area properly selected so that you can quickly change the colours later.

Step 5 and 6: Photoshop - Colouring and textures.

There's no screenshot for this step since it's pretty much what you see in the final illustration. 

I tend to work on colours and textures at the same time since the values of a texture WILL affect the values of the colour (that's the whole point.) So for example, if I have a red colour, it might turn pink when I apply the texture. Hence, it's best to work with these simultaneously rather than start with colours that I have "perfected" and don't want altered in any way, because they WILL be altered once the texture is applied. Applying textures often results in the loss of clarity in some of my linework values but that doesn't bother me.

And that's all for this week!