Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Wild Card

TOM - This week I did an illustration for New York Press. It was a bit of a departure from the sex themed illustrations I usually do for them. The story is about a guy who's good friend was killed in an underground poker game last fall. A true story that reflects on a senseless death as well as the recent death of underground poker itself. The Art Director had this specific idea in mind for the drawing, so I put my energy into creating a nice composition and playing around with color. Edowyn recently gave me some tips about adding texture with Photoshop, so I've been playing around with it. On a separate sheet of paper I made an ink wash, scanned it, adjusted it a bit, then added it to the color.

Before all of that though, it was drawn in pencil, inked with brush. Check out the article in this weeks New York Press, or read it right here. Later.

7 comments:

james flames said...

really great job. great composition, and tho it's subtle, the gradient from the top of the picture adds so much.
hey, can you elaborate on the texture technique? i'd love to know what you're doing there - looks cool.

james flames said...

oh, and i fixed the link to edo's page - it had too many ///'s

yeah kid.

Edwin Vazkez said...

What kind of texture did you use?

thomas pitilli said...

In terms of the texture, I just made an ink wash on a separate sheet of bristol. I made it so that it wasn't an even wash, I wanted the 'brushyness' to be there. Then I Equalized it in Photoshop to make it look more blotchy like watercolor, then tossed it in as a separate layer on top of the color, messed with the opacity a bit, and there you have it.

Gabe said...

The colors on this piece are crazy nice. I also very much enjoy that texture.

thomas pitilli said...

Thanks, Gabe.

Anonymous said...

I love how this came out! It looks so good!I love how the hands are so subtly bigger then the rest of the composition, also the texture you used looks great. High five!