WATCH OUT! It's Looking like TROUBLE this Illustration Friday!

October 23, 2014

WATCH OUT! It's Looking like TROUBLE this Illustration Friday!

     Yay! It's Illustration Friday and I must confess I'm rather sleepy after finishing this one. This means I will try to be a bit more short and sweet. That is kinda exactly the opposite of my concept of this week's challenge. The topic is TROUBLE and I will tell you it had been a troubling week, from an artistic standpoint. I began the week with such wonderful plans of what I was going to accomplish. I'm certain many of you can relate to this scenario. Needless to say you can guess how this plays out… You run into more Trouble than you bargained for in getting this very ambitious list of things done. I obviously didn't get EVERYTHING on the list done, but I did accomplish something, which is good; not great, but good.

     I had originally planned a completely different illustration for today. I was going to get two stones for one bird (I don't like that phrase the other way it goes because I don't like hurting animals.) Anyway, the first illustration I planned was also to be the work I was planning to sell prints of at the Tour de Farms. Artists are supposed to sell bicycle related art at that event. I didn't really have any bike related art, so I had planned this illustration for that event. I also wanted it to work for Illustration Friday. Trouble was that this first illustration had A LOT of elements and when I began working on it, I realized there were a lot of compositional problems and just plain sticks in my spokes….

     SO, I had to "Change Speeds" and table that illustration for something that could be accomplished realistically within the time frame.

     Oh yeah, I didn't mention that I had also expected to work on a separate illustration for my portfolio project. Trouble with that was I really didn't realistically have any time to work on it. I got very frustrated with the fact that I had been spending most of my work time on Reference Research for art that I wasn't going to be able to complete by Friday. A LOT of going back to the Drawing Board, quite literally, over and over again.

     Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention, I was working on getting a Halloween Costume together before Saturday night (since I was planning on attending a Halloween Party.)

     Needless to say I ran into Trouble this week. Its funny but I rarely experience the Illustration Friday Topic so literally during the week I'm working on that particular topic. So as I was working on my Halloween costume, after giving up on the idea that I would still participate in Illustration Friday's challenge this week. I decided that I really didn't want to work on a bike related illustration this week for IF Friday. It's October and the month is almost out and I usually like to illustrate something Halloween related. That is exactly what I decided to do. My concept was kind of a twist on some work I used to do for the city of Juliette, Ga.

For those of you who do not know, Juliette, Georgia is the physical location where the film Fried Green Tomatoes was filmed. It's quite a quaint and charming small town that still looks like it did on the silver screen.

Every year around Halloween there is a Big Green Tomato Festival there in the downtown area. I used to illustrate and design the posters for this annual event. Since it was primarily a children's festival and it happened right around Halloween, the poster always featured happy children dressed in Halloween costumes.

http://lewiswportersketchblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/homestyle-fried-green-posters.html

I wanted to twist that same concept a bit to fit this new illustration for this week's IF topic. I was thinking about what it is like from the perspective of all the wonderfully generous people out there that patiently wait on their front porches to give away candy to all the Trick-or-Treaters that come by their home on Halloween night. I thought of this small group of rugged and mischievous children that might be on the cusp of the age that you should stop going trick or treating and let the younger kids have at it.

I wanted this particular group of costumed kids to NOT be HAPPY and to NOT be spreading Seasonal Cheer, but causing trouble for any would be candy givers. I wanted them to seem a bit intimidating by the way they posture themselves. I also wanted their choice of costume to play a part in their intimidation: a ghost, a witch, a gangster and a shark. I wanted them to really put the TRICK in Trick-or-Treating. As if a refusal might end in something rather unpleasant.

I enjoyed creating this motley and mischievous band of kids. It kind of ended up being pulled together at the 11th Hour (Pun Intended), but I think they turned out OK. I had originally had more elaborate plans for the background. I wanted to really show that they could be on someone's unsuspecting front porch. Alas, I just really did not have the time for it. Oh, well. lol…

This pretty much sums up this week's post about this week's IF Illustration submission. I hope all of you out there are enjoying getting your costumes together and have some fun Halloween plans. I'm looking forward to the Holiday festivities myself. Ill be posting another blog very soon about this year's costume, so keep an eye out for that.