In the american west..

While looking for inspiration for the book cover task, i rediscover the work of Richard Avedon, and were blown away by the portrait he did for his book " In the american west". I love the way he use black and white, and the absolut simplicity of the covers of his books. Could not get more inspired.. Check it out on richardavedon.com..



Book cover

Another task is to realise a book cover. We had to made up a customer brief, and i got inspired by my last year travels in Mexico and California. Here is some first sketches.

101 fruits..continuing..

I put the comic idea for representing pineapples on hold and decide to explore a commercial application. I came up with pineapple juice, not very original, i know..So i will produce as much as i could logos for juice can and bottle. I decided to respect a custom brief i made up, to help myself. The logo has to be modern, but must also represent the legacy of the brand, nearly a century old. It has to be in spot color and should provide the  shape of a pineapple, and the following type: EXTRA JUICE, Brewed in Hawaii since 1920, 100 % Natural.

To do so, i first drew a Pineapple (again) and a palmtree, which i can use in my illustrations. Again, Once drawn on paper,i scanned the drawings, open the files in photosop, ad a layer and with the pencil or the pen tool, redraw them to obtain a clean outline. For the pineapple, i just draw half of it cause i am lazy, then the outline done, copy it and paste it ( ctrl + C and CTRL + F to copy it on the front of the original outline ), and finaly went to Image>Arrange>reflect>vertical. You just have to move the second outline to obtain the full pineapple.

From there, i add type and shapes to compose pictures. Those are i have done so far.

And my very favourite, an old retro one, wich i made thanx to the tutorial you can find at :            http://abduzeedo.com/create-zee-vintage-label-illustrator.

and still counting...

Sorry your logo have been eliminated..

I sent another design on designcrowd.com last week end. that was for a custom body part car cie in USA. They provide mostly owner of Jeep, to tought kind of guy. The name of the company is Dark Horse and they wanted a badass looking logo. I came up with those

Unfortunely, they just let me know that they did not choose it..Well, i know the competition is super strong, and there are very few chances to be pick, just keep on trying i guess..

101 fruits task, 4 done and still counting..

Being a student a TAFE Australia,one of the task i have to produce by the end of the semester is called: "101 fruits".  Basically, you have to do 101 representations of a fruit you choose in restricted proportions and sizes, in 5cm litlle squares. I  chose to represent a Pineapple. That is really a interesting object. Its skin got that grind which you can play with. The shape of the pineapple is immediatly recognizable. The colors pretty interesting too, with a range going from yellow to blue.  Here is what i produce yesterday:

As a frenchman, i grew up reading European Comics ( which we call BD, standing for Bande Dessine ): Tintin, Blueberry, Axterix..name it i probably read it. BD is a major influence in my work.
I first drew the sketches:

I wanted to track the pineapple from the harvesting stage to the consumer mouth in few drawings. Here the first 4. You can see a map of Hawaii at the very top of the left sketche. I was not really sure it would fit in the final composition, i tried to make the landscape as much reconizable as a tropical island,e.i Hawaii. I recently went to the cinema and watch the last George Clooney movie "The Descendants", which action is in Hawaii, and there is that beautiful shot that inspired me : 

That is Kipu Ranch.

I then drew the main pineapple and its plant, redrew through Tracer paper, separating the both elements and then scan it. I used photoshop to produce the picture. I cleaned the scan by reversing the colors ( image>adjustment>invert) and clean the lines with the dodge tool. I inverted the colors again to get back to the black on white. I filled the drawings with colors (on wich i should work on ), duplicate the layers and did first the picture bottom left. As you can see, the pineapple is always the same in any picture, as the plant is at different scales and colors. I just drew the landscape background on screen using my Wacon Bamboo pen. Once the four images dones, i made the template in Illustrator, import the pics and placed them.

i have got twelve  more to do.

Another main influence in this Project is the work of artist Erik Abel who recently made the poster of the Reef Hawaiian Pro, a Surfing Comp in Hawaii:

Check it out at  www.abelarts.com .