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Illustration Friday: Holiday

Posted in Illustration Friday, Recent Work by Brad Wednesday December 28, 2005
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Holiday, (c) Brad Reid 2005 1,2
Hi, and welcome one and all to my first post for Illustration Friday, where every week we suit our illustrations to predetermined themes. I’m glad to make your acquaintance. Anyone who has been to this website before will know that I’m in the process of building a portfolio to pursue a career in illustration. In fact, you should know that I’m going after this goal rather aggressively, so I’m hoping my Illustration Friday visitors in particular will be able to lend me a hand. Look at what I have to show, if you would, and let me know if you think I’m on the right or the wrong track. Any constructive criticism will be very much appreciated.
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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

Bublé from Babalu

Posted in General, Recent Work by Brad Sunday December 25, 2005
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Bublé from Babalu, Brad Reid 2005 ^,+

Fans of British Columbian Michael Bublé will recognize this illustration as a reworking of the photograph featured on the front of the jazz singer’s Babalu cd, a fun collection of songs that includes What a Wonderful World and a swing version of the old 60s Spiderman cartoon theme.
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The most vexing problem I came up against as I worked on this was that the source photograph doesn’t resemble Bublé all that strongly at all. I sought out a likeness from other photographs, but inevitably lost it again as I incorporated the shadow effects that make the source photograph such a success.
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I don’t know whether to consider this illustration quite my own, given that it is so strongly derived from someone else’s photography. Still, such a treatment is one example of a service I could provide an art director if they supplied me with a photograph in which they were interested.
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Anyone who frets that so much of today’s pop music sounds like the soundtrack from some 70s dystopian vision of a horrible future, might enjoy listening to a few songs from Michael Bublé’s latest cd, It’s Time, streamed in excellent quality at his website.
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Adventures In Comic Book Colouring

Posted in General by Brad Saturday December 24, 2005

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Watchmen (Issue 5, Page 8 detail), Dave Gibbons 1986
Colours by Brad Reid 2005
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Basically, ever since a lack of funds forced me out of my painting studio four years ago, I’ve been racking my brain for some new inlet – economically feasible inlet – back into the full-time creative life. Such was the problem that led me to two or three months this past year during which I did little else with my free time outside of figuring out the new digital methods of comic book colouring.
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I’m sure there was some regression involved here. From the third grade on until I began to favour painting at the age of 22, my whole ambition in life, filled with youthful naivety and a whole-hearted love for comic books, was that I should become the greatest comic book artist that the world had ever known. Yeesh. But still, I must admit, even now, that if some work with comic book colouring were to happen by my way, it would thrill me more than just a little bit.
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Gold Digger (Page 4 detail), Jean “Moebius” Giraud 1987
Colours by Brad Reid 2005
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I expect that the methods of digital colouring that I worked out during this period of learning will stick with me and continue to develop throughout the rest of my career. Repeat visitors to this site will see them implemented in upcoming work. A future post just might feature a tutorial on the basics of my approach to digital colouring. Suffice to say, any kind of advanced work is not as straightforward as Photoshop dabblers might guess – my initial efforts were devoid of any real sense of light. One should consider that Photoshop was never intended – at first anyway – as a generator of content, but rather as an editor.

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All of my practice during this period was done with previously published work and the two illustrations featured in this post are among my favourites of what I managed to accomplish. I had to strip the colour from the Watchmen panel, of course, before I reapplied my own, and the Moebius illustration was published in black and white to begin with.
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Welcome to My Weblog

Posted in General, Recent Work by Brad Friday December 23, 2005
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Alfred Hitchcock (Lines Only), (c) Brad Reid 2005 ^,+,+
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Welcome to Brad Reid’s weblog. In this new digital age, I can think of no better showcase for my new ambition, namely that of my becoming a self-sustaining, professional illustrator. Unfortunately, I have little or nothing to show for myself as of yet, so it is my intention that over the coming months visitors to this site will see the articles of a solid portfolio come together. After that, I hope you all will come by to see what I’m up to in my new working life.

My first offering is a little picture of Alfred Hitchcock that I did this past winter of 2005, during my last rush at a career as an illustrator. Although this picture’s creation was somewhat more circuitous than I intend to let on, in an ideal world it would have gone something like this: a scan of a pencil drawing was inked with vector brushes in Adobe Illustrator and subsequently coloured with digital chalk pastels in Corel Painter. Small alterations (small, in my ideal world) were made to the colours in Adobe Photoshop.

Vectors brushes are my means-to-an-end as of late. I enjoy the perfect curves that vector brushes deliver, and I enjoy working with just this sort of line drawing, free from large areas of shadow or cross-hatching, which is left wide open to the application of colour.
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Jan. 1, 2006: Due to popular request, the links on this post now include a view of a Time Magazine version of Alfred Hitchcock that I did on a lark.
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