O'Reilly

[scottwoyak]

Hi Guys,

I haven't posted for a few months. Been busy at work, but have also been trying to cross off one of my bucket list items - getting one of my drawings published somewhere. A logical fit seemed to be the covers for the O'Reilly books (www.oreilly.com). I use these books at work all the time and have always admired the covers. So what they heck, I contacted them and asked to submit a drawing. I thought this would be a no-brainer - I do animals all the time and most come out pretty well.

They initially said they were looking for drawings of a Saiga Antellope and a Tamarin Monkey. I did quick drawings of each to get feedback:



I knew the monkey drawing wouldn't work because it was too tall and narrow so I didn't put too much effort into the face which came out poor. At this point I was just looking for feedback. The feedback I got was that the pictures were fine, but that they wanted more of an "engraved" look and feel instead of pen and ink - could I change my style? As an example they gave me the following from one of their covers:


Ok, I said, I think I get it. I really studied this drawing and couldn't figure out how it was done. Some parts definitely look like pen lines while other look like an engraving - white lines on a black background. I did some research and decided to try a drawing in scratchboard. After a few tries, here's what I came up with:


I knew this drawing wasn't up to the level they wanted, but I sent it off for feedback anyway and basically heard what I expected - a little rough, particularly around the hands and feet, and the face was too dark.

Determined to get this one right I drew this guy about 5 more times and just couldn't come up with something I really liked. Very frustrating. In the end the best I could create was below:



Even though the tail wasn't visible in the photograph I was referencing, I tried to add one in for good measure:


I crossed my fingers and sent this one off. As expected though it didn't have enough of the engraved look so no go. I don't think I'm getting closer to their desired style so I'm going to hold off sending anything else unless I have some big breakthrough. Oh well, it was worth the try.

In the end this has been a great learning experience. Much tougher to change your style than I realized. I also had to draw a lot more from my head than just from photos to get the right composition. I still think I can get there, but I haven't crossed this one off the bucket list yet!

I think I'll go back to creating a few drawings just for fun again.

[Blah]

Scott...the amount of progress that you have made with a new technique in such a short time is really impressive.

[valchina612]

Wow, what patience and beautiful drawings. I love what you have done, and I hope you realise your dreams when the time is right.

Val.

[gpathy]

Awesome. I have been a fan of those covers too.. and honestly bought a few on Perl and other stuff just for the covers The other covers that admire are the Manning Press.

Your work from a distance is pretty much O'Reilly stuff to my eyes! Could it be that they are looking for a three dimensional thing all over.. I see the mustache(?) in your last image kind of flat. also it could be the granularity? and finally in the tail I can see your strokes being a bit stiff at the very end.

Please consider these thoughts as a layman's analysis just for the sake of curiosity as to what these guys are really looking for. No way these are critiques of your beautiful work!

[cem]

Amazing work Scott. Welcome back. Have fun with what you are doing. Don't let frustration get the better of you. You have a wonderful talent and much patience. Try some galleries.

[scottwoyak]

gpathy, I have one of the Perl books too with the Llama on the cover. I'm not sure exactly what they were looking for, but a continuing comment was that my work looked to much like pen and ink when they wanted engraving.

For the first time I have really thought about how I draw and what I need to do to achieve a different effect. I learned that I draw with a layered approach. I draw features with a few strokes and then add additional strokes until the shading is what I want. This results in a scratchy, almost messy style. Works fantastic for certain types of images.

After studying some of the covers, there were a few things I noticed:

1. Their lines are clean. There's very little of the scratchy overlap of lines. Each stroke appears quite deliberate. I had to really train myself to not do things in layers and I was only moderately successful.

2. Their lines are not even weight. I typically use a rapidograph pen which results in a consistent line thickness. I tried a bunch of different pens to see if I could effectively vary line weight in a single stroke. For my drawing I ended up using a Pigma Micron pen, be it still had pretty even thicknesses. The engraving effect resulted in thin lines at each stroke tip and were progressively thicker towards the center of the stroke.

3. Some of their lines appear etched. In some places it's obvious that lines were drawn on a white background. Others, however, look like an etching where material was carved out of a surface to achieve white on black. I was told that some of the drawings were created as a combination of scratchboard and pen and ink.

Reference close up:


My close up:


I'm hoping they produce a Tamarin Monkey cover for me to compare my drawing to. I think if I want to really get better here I need to experiment with new mediums. Maybe a higher quality scratch board or something.

[gpathy]

Scott,

The deliberate line quality is certainly *the* criteria !. So, you do see the gap in your image! Line width would be optional. Etching too I wouldn't think is a criteria.

Simple example would be your dollar bill.. *that* is an engraving! either look for it under a magnifying glass or you must see a image by googling.. also google 'William Shakespeare engraving' which will fetch you the most popular image.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_engraving

Hope you produce one soon with this course correction and submit successfully!

[crbuchan]

Are they looking for scratchboard? Check out Steven Noble at www.stevennoble.com and Michael Halbert at inkart.com. Also the scratchboard forum here has a bunch of really talented people.