Here's a half-page illustration I did for
Canadian Running, it'll be published in their September/October issue. It's for a regular column they run that's written by a runner named Peter Hadzipetros who shares his insights, funny stories, and lessons learned about marathon running.
In this piece I wanted to challenge myself a bit, so when I silkscreened the colours I did two gradients. The yellow and the blue both do a gradual fade into white. In this piece it helps to indicate the haziness of a hot day and the distance reaching back into the background. Gradients are tricky to do with silkscreen printing, but I think I might start using it more in the future.
Here was my initial sketch. The client wanted it to be simpler and to incorporate a face, so this was my next one:
Here's the second sketch, which I like a lot. The simplification really helped. And because it's more of an entertaining opinion piece, it's nice to have a personal focus with the figure. The client wanted the full figure shown, which leads us to the final product. I always seem to lean towards cropping images in close, so it's good that I have a full figure in my portfolio now!
I don't often use orange, I don't know why. Whenever I try to, it creeps into the red or pink territory. My "
Add Rhyme and Mix" piece also has some orange in it, lately I've been making an effort. So not only am I glad I got to work on doing hand-done colour gradients, but I broadened my colour palette, too! My next goal is to do an illustration with a cool purple or blue in it.
It's always great to get a new client, I was thrilled to get a chance to work with the magazine! Hope you enjoyed seeing my process.
Julia Minamata
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