Dig Deeper

Art n’ words by Rich Terdoslavich (C) 2025

Wednesday afternoon. Cold, rainy day. Podcast on, listening to an interview between two people-famous comedians-while I am typing away for this blog. Want to pick up where I left off with this illustration job I did for Sustainable Tahoe.

In my newsletter, I wrote about techniques and tools that I used on this job. For this blog, I want to write about the creative process or reflections I had after the job was done. As I mentioned in the newsletter, I felt I stumbled onto a style or technique-for lack of a better term-as I was adding watercolors and acrylic paints on the layout.

How to describe it. I’m working on the piece, painting in the acrylics, blending in the watercolors, thinking, the inks are not working. Don’t look solid black, various tones in the inks. Scanned the work. Scan it into Fresco. Has to go digital, has to be digital. Once I scanned the piece, and started digitizing the foreground where it was black, everything started to click. There was contrast in all the visual elements.

As I was working on this illustration, I felt I stumbled on a style/look that, I don’t recall ever doing it before. It reminded me of cartoons from the thirties or the forties. You would have the background scene, a soft, faded look, but the cartoon characters in the foreground would have a sharp look with a black outline around it. It had contrast. The digital inks in the foreground. It clicks. If I inked the background-the buildings, the trees-I felt it would clash with the woman and the hand in the foreground. So, I didn’t digitize the inks in the background. Kept it untouched. It gave the foreground and background contrast. Some visual elements pushed forward, others receded in the background. The illustration felt unified as if all the visual elements were not clashing for space.

In the end, you can plan it out with sketches, ideas, concepts, draw them and have an idea as to what the final illustration will look like. Then, as you are finally working on the illustration, you stumble onto something by accident. You start coloring the piece and blending the tones may not work out. So, to avoid adding more and more colors which could start muddying up the work, you might switch it up, going from watercolors to adding acrylics. And somewhere in the process, you discover something where the colors blend successfully and you find the groove, you find the swing. Then it is smooth sailing. Job complete, the clients loves it and everything clicks.

My advice, just to wrap this up, is always prepare yourself on an illustration job. Once you get a description of the job, look at art, film, photographs, comic books, study composition that can inspire you for the job. Visual references. Client gives you a description of the job, you ask yourself: how I can make this work, visually? What is the composition going to look like? What about framing, what colors to use? Then, gather up the right art supplies that you are going to need for the job. Draw out the sketches, the layouts, experiment, work with composition, draw a few angle shots, place your vanishing point within the layout at various angles. Take a look and see which one works. Once you have all that and start the job, give yourself some room to leave for any last minute surprises or happy accidents. What I mean by that, for example, is if you accidentally blend two colors together and discover a different tone or decide to apply some inking technique that you decide to do on the last minute. And then, as you are coloring or inking, the art starts to click. You didn’t think about using that specific technique or idea in the beginning, but in the end, you use it, the illustration is completed and everything works out.

Well, guess that’s about it. Anything else going on? Watching a bunch of movies online. Have been getting back into lettering, graphic design, title design, etc. Looking at the work of Saul Bass. He did those great title designs on the opening credits of many films by Hitchcock, Kubrick and Scorsese. Highly recommend his work.

I’ll be back with the next blog next month. Maybe write about another illustration job. Talk to you soon and have a great weekend. All the best.