My style of illustration requires relative attention to perspective, light, and shadow—even if it is forced upon improbable figures and forms that can only be dreamed up in the dark, uncharted corners of one’s mind. Anyway, when I set out to establish my style, I purposely incorporated such attentions to keep my illustrations somewhat technically challenging as I knew this pursuit would endure and evolve for years to come.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about the air a bit and exploring what’s known as "atmospheric perspective." The greater the amount of dust, fog, and other molecules stirred up the air, the more faded and dull objects tend to look as they recede in the distance. This piece I recently completed for an audio/video components calendar really shows a thicker, more dense atmosphere than usual. It fondly reminds me of a clear, hot, sunny day in southern California with a fair amount of CO2 emissions floating in the air. The look really helps the composition as it pulls the background buildings back and forces the foreground characters to pop up front.
On another note that is reflected in this piece, I’ve also had an interest in illustrating robots with clear heads. I know—weird.
Volt looks cool to me
I like it. I am about to express my ignorance in illustration, but have you ever tried to mess with a narrow depth of field in illustration, like to do in photography to bring focus to an area of your picture. Any techniques in creating a nice Bokeh?
That could be pretty amazing in an illustrative piece.
I have experimented with that in the past—with some nice results, but it’s been awhile and it’d be fun to explore it a bit more. I’ll file that idea on the brain to incorporate into an upcoming assignment. It’s fairly easy to blur the edges of computer generated art, but it would be cool to structure the blurs in appropriate to distance–particularly when combined with atmospheric perspective. (I had to look up “Bokeh”—learned a new word today. Thanks Jon)