The Home of the Creative Mind

Welcome to PooBahSpiel, the online voice and home of the creative mind of Mark Monlux, Illustrator Extraordinaire. Prepare yourself for an endless regaling of art directly from the hand of this stellar artist. And brace yourself against his mighty wind of pontification. Updates are kinda weekly and show daily sketches, current projects, and other really nifty stuff.

Thursday, September 30, 2021

TAIP 10: Coloring Begins


 


This is the start of the coloring process. Earlier, while I was creating the elements and determining the layout I was also selecting the colors. Since I want each person to be drawn and colored with colors that are associated with them by their friends, I decided not to rely on color for composition. What I could do to create a sense of unity is use the same consistent palette through the image. And, to make the work best represent me, I would pull upon two palettes of color I created already. The first was a set of colors I created for a Mermay challenge. I went on to use those colors in most of my work for the rest of the year to create a consistent look for my portfolio. When you look in my Instagram you will see that as a result of my color selections, all of my images complement each other.

Saturday, September 25, 2021

TAIP 09: Line Work Completed

 


It's been a while since my last posting. I was dragging my feet on filling in sections of the image which were giving me problems. I'd yet to make up my mind on how I was going to approach some aspects of the drawing. Since part of this project was me growing, I allowed myself to puzzle over various elements and choices. Perhaps the toughest choice was to decide to move past the ink stage. This would mean I would have to live with my choices. 

I will be facing some interesting challenges due to my technology choices. I decided to create the image inside ProCreate on my iPad Pro. But, because the size of the image is substantial, at a decent resolution, I'm limited to only five layers. Only five! Normally I would have had a different layer for each person and often those layers would have sub-layers. That can't be the case. I must also plan for the scenario that the file might choke. So I will fill in the image via quadrants instead of all over at the same time, which is what I normally do. 

It's time to charge ahead! Here's a time-lapse of the inking. I want to thank the Tacoma Arts Commission again for having faith in this project. Without the Tacoma Artists Initiative Project, I'm not sure I would have ever pushed this past a daydream. Now it's becoming a reality.