Abstract Illustration
From time to time I do looser, more abstract illustration—sometimes by hand, sometimes digitally, and sometimes a mix of both methods. Usually these have been for mix tapes and CDs for myself and family…it’s not a major arm of my design work, more of an indulgent hobby which time rarely permits, but I’ve decided to include some samples here to show that I’m not strictly a hard-geometric-lines kind of designer and that I can produce inherently expressive elements such as these.
Bergen County Zoological Park—Proposed Canyon Country Exhibit illustration
illustration (Photoshop CS2)
2006 | client: Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects, Ltd
One of the Principals at Jones & Jones came to me one day with a one-off request to color a line-drawing illustration by Seth Seablom, one of the company’s regular illustrators; although they were having Seth do a “natural”/realistic coloring job on this illustration when the linework had been finalized, this Principal wanted to see something wildly different in addition—not to represent the project per se but rather to exist as a standalone piece, perhaps to use as a holiday-card insert (which I think we did use it for eventually). I roughed in a few fairly intense colors here and there and said “along these lines?” “More,” he replied. Eventually I took it to this extreme by thinking of some early 1970s California-rock album art. Most of the time it took to create this consisted of building the illusion of depth—organizing the layers and assigning relative light/intensity hierarchy—and then going back and forth with that Principal to adjust elements he wanted to emphasize. It’s a quirky piece, especially as we left it in this draft-like form, with the only linework retained being rough notations and guides.
Comments © 2009 Mark Ellis Walker, except as noted, and no claim is made to source imagery noted.