Here's my latest Illustration 2 homework! Honestly I don't think the critique for it went as well as it could have. I did push myself to try on the micron pens again, I avoid them like the plague. I discovered they behave really well on cold-press watercolor paper though.

The gist of the crit was the picture was nice, but not quite right. Too busy, Too colorful, not enough control in the restraint department. I wound up removing a lot of what the original sketch included, but it still needed to come down further. MOAR PRACTICE!

EDIT!: That was goofy of me! For those who asked so they could crit, the project was to illustrate a box and a shopping bag for either seriously expensive chocolate, ridiculously expensive shoes, or jean patou's horrifyingly expensive perfume. We were encouraged to spend a lot of time looking up ad illustrations, check up on the product we chose, and put our own spin on it.

This illustration was the box for the perfume. My personal goal was to create a semi-nouveau image that felt like what I was reading about the perfume and it's history. I used brighter colors rather than the usual earthy elegant nouveau tones so that it wouldn't be too gloomy, the perfume is called Joy, after all, and it was introduced during the depression for Patou's patrons who were no longer able to afford his Couture. (he designed clothes, then the economy crashed.) The perfume carried the business through.

The problem though was how something like this would have read smaller. I like looking at crazy frantic imagery, but when compared to what's normally on the market for things like perfume boxes, this is pretty gaudy. During the sketch critique, we talked about using it as the bag image.. but I still "sold" it as the box because I felt more strongly about it as that kind of image.

Ideas to improve it as a functional piece for the product were thusly to tone it down, fewer colors, to make it more readable on a smaller scale. And that's the story! Sorry for not including it earlier, and thanks to everyone! I'm looking forward to your crits!

I feel pretty energized by the experience though, and I do still really love how this piece turned out ^ ^

TOOLS:
Pencil, Micron pen, Adobe Photoshop, Open canvas 4+