Ranger Experiment

I volunteered to do the family Christmas card this year, which by tradition has always involved ~~clever~~ silly images of family members. Unable to come up with anything particularly gimmicky, I decided to just do a portrait of each of the six of us (parents, brother and our respective ladies) using a different style for each. Knowing how much Jacqueline loves Scary Go Round, I decided to draw her in a rough mockup of John Allison's style. I don't think I got particularly close, but see for yourself. (Jacq also likes seeing my process, which is why you're being subjected to this.)

First step, as usual, is to sketch things out. Note the trademark Allison slender waist, upturned nose and doe eyes. (His style is completely girl-centric, whereas my women tend to look rather broad-shouldered and square-jawed).
Usually I ink before scanning - and you can see why - but I was assuming that the sketch would just form guidelines. After scanning I jammed up the contrast by about 60 or so, in order to see what I was playing with better.

I wasn't hugely confident about what I was doing, so I started with something nice and easy - background. The sketch goes on the top layer with low opacity to act as a guide - the background layers are actually much brighter than this.
The Smudge tool is easy to overuse because it is awesome.

Still not wanting to take the plunge, I added some middle-ground detail - fir trees, yarrow and monkey-flowers, with copious use of copy-and-paste. Still not very satisfied with this, but maybe it'll look better once there's foreground interest.

By this point the number of layers was getting rather out of control, so I took the sketch into another document to work on. Allison does his lines first and then adds colour, but he has a graphics tablet and can manage relatively-smooth lines. (Also, I should probably be using Illustrator rather than Photoshop, but this computer (not mine) has just had CS2 put onto it and I don't know whether this ImageReady thing is the new Illustrator, or what.)
You will note that even though it looks all nice and warm and there are pretty flowers everywhere, Jacq is in winter uniform (long sleeves and a snood). Also, in real life she wouldn't have the moron hat, she'd be wearing her hair up and there'd be an incredibly unflattering bullet-proof vest making her look like a barrel on legs.

Adding the trickier colours and tidying up the sketching as I go along. Jacq will be happy to know that the skin tone is stolen directly from Shelley.
By this point I had realised that I wasn't going to be able to fully reverse-engineer the style, so I decided to keep the lines and just tidy them up a bit.

And now we insert the ranger into the environment.
I'd done some tidying-up, most notably around the eyes - which I'm not sure I really like the effect of. Plus I forgot eyebrows, not to mention the bald eagle, and the background's a touch too strong.

	First step, as usual, is to sketch things out. Note the trademark Allison slender waist, upturned nose and doe eyes. (His style is completely girl-centric, whereas my women tend to look rather broad-shouldered and square-jawed). Usually I ink before scanning - and you can see why - but I was assuming that the sketch would just form guidelines. After scanning I jammed up the contrast by about 60 or so, in order to see what I was playing with better.
	I wasn't hugely confident about what I was doing, so I started with something nice and easy - background. The sketch goes on the top layer with low opacity to act as a guide - the background layers are actually much brighter than this. The Smudge tool is easy to overuse because it is awesome.
	Still not wanting to take the plunge, I added some middle-ground detail - fir trees, yarrow and monkey-flowers, with copious use of copy-and-paste. Still not very satisfied with this, but maybe it'll look better once there's foreground interest.
	By this point the number of layers was getting rather out of control, so I took the sketch into another document to work on. Allison does his lines first and then adds colour, but he has a graphics tablet and can manage relatively-smooth lines. (Also, I should probably be using Illustrator rather than Photoshop, but this computer (not mine) has just had CS2 put onto it and I don't know whether this ImageReady thing is the new Illustrator, or what.) You will note that even though it looks all nice and warm and there are pretty flowers everywhere, Jacq is in winter uniform (long sleeves and a snood). Also, in real life she wouldn't have the moron hat, she'd be wearing her hair up and there'd be an incredibly unflattering bullet-proof vest making her look like a barrel on legs.
	Adding the trickier colours and tidying up the sketching as I go along. Jacq will be happy to know that the skin tone is stolen directly from Shelley. By this point I had realised that I wasn't going to be able to fully reverse-engineer the style, so I decided to keep the lines and just tidy them up a bit.
	And now we insert the ranger into the environment. I'd done some tidying-up, most notably around the eyes - which I'm not sure I really like the effect of. Plus I forgot eyebrows, not to mention the bald eagle, and the background's a touch too strong.