Last summer I posted a tease of the two illustrations above, as they were in progress. These were two of a series of ten illustrations I was commissioned to create for the Cocktail Guide to the Galaxy, a recipe book written by R.A. Heidel (also the proprietor of The Way Station, famous for its Tardis).
The book will be published by MacMillan, to be forthcoming in the autumn of this year here in the States. It will have 40+ illustrations, crafted by four of us in total. I’ll post news of this as I receive it.
Process notes and more illustrations after the jump…
But first a note re: this blog— This year I will be regularly posting every Monday and Thursday. There may be random posts on other days as well, but Mon and Thur will be regular like clockwork (barring unforeseen events).
The illustrations were created using a combination of analog and digital techniques. After submitting thumbnail sketches to the author and receiving feedback and suggestions, I drew all of the elements for each cocktail with woodless pencils of varying softness.
I then scanned all of those drawings and created a layered Photoshop file for each, in which I fine-tuned the compositions; created a cinematic ‘depth of field” or focus pulls using blurs and lighting augmentations; and, finally, added the second color for printing the book.
I chose to implement the second color only for the cocktails themselves, to keep the drinks / recipes as the main focus for each drawing, which I think worked very well.
e daggar art: THE MUSEUM 