Work-In-Progress

This is part of an illustration I'm doing for work and it's scheduled to run a week from today.

For my cartoony-er stuff I really like to pour on the garish colors. When I have these weird and ugly types of characters I feel it adds to the fun if they have green skin and orange pants and purple hair. I make every effort to control the color in most of my work, but for the wackey-fun stuff I try to ignore it if my color-sense is tingling.

One of the hazards of my occupation-- illustrator and graphics guy for a newspaper chain-- is the printing process itself. Everything I do runs in several newspapers and is printed off of-- I think-- three different presses. During a print run quality varies. As ink runs low it is replaced on the go; so, for example, you will see some copies are running low on magenta and the colors seem dry and rusty, then, when the ink is refilled you will find vivid or over-saturated copies. This can happen with ALL the colors so there are many interesting variations to be had.

And then there is the registration of color plates. One of our presses in particular, as I understand, is very old and there is a good deal of off-register printing coming out of that one.

To top it all off newspapers are printed on newsprint! Considering all these factors I've come to regard each copy as a monoprint of sorts. Unique! One of a kind!

So the point of all that was to say that I've found, by using a reckless palette, no matter how dried out or oversaturated or off-register an illustration happens to print, it retains it's characteristic madness on the page even if it comes out much differently than I'd hoped for.

The End.

3 comments:

  1. lovely style!! A nice little moment ... very cool!

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  2. Hey Jeff, wow, I have missed so many posts that you put up. I just got back from Japan a week ago or so..wait, maybe two weeks...damn it. anyway, I wanted to see what crazy things you were up to.

    I really love the images on your blog. These cartoon characters are awesome! They have interesting personalities. The crazy dude with the guitar is one of my favorites even though you said it is an older piece. I guess I just love weird drawings like that.

    I am so happy that you posted that Vader drawing too. He loos so menacing grilling burgers and taking care of his screaming baby lol, it's so fun. I like seeing how much of a range of work you do. I really like those black and white cards that you did. I am sure you will post about the game when it comes out. I really want to see it. Is the game coming out nationwide or locally or can you not talk much about it yet? anyway, I want to see it!

    see ya around man

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  3. Alina: You post awesome sketches every day and comment on every blog I look at! How do you do it? You're #1!

    Jeff: I'm not too sure about how widespread that game is going to be. It's being advertised in DC's Wildstorm comics so I'm guessing it'll be everywhere. I hope it does well, I really liked working on it and the game designer was great to work with all the way through. He's a good guy and I hope it does well for him!

    www.venusneedsmen.com has all the info! I'll make more noise about it here when it's available.

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