Every song has a soul. You can dress it up however you like, or strip it down to it's barest bones. Understanding the essence and the core emotion is the key to finding the rest of the song. Stella was born to the pendulum rhythm of a 3/4 waltz. That was her foundation. Since then I've been carving out the details of her personality to see what she's all about.
There's a myriad of different styles or directions to go, but which one is the right one for this little elephant? Which one tells her story best? I don't have a personal style or a preferred medium, and no preconceived notion of what she should look like...so it's a discovery process. I'm just testing the waters.
I usually start with a pencil and some computer paper. I prefer this method to sketchbooks because I like to reorder pages and spread them out around me, take a step back to compare, or use one page as an underlay for the next evolution. This is where I find my flow. It's a blissful state of freedom and exploration, pencil moving quickly and fluidly, pausing to erase some lines and darken others. Finding the shape on the page, and pulling it out.
The pencil drawing has all this urgency and life. It is the remaining artifact from the moment when the idea first hit the page, so inherently, it's really exciting. But it's not done. It's still just a sketch. What does it look like when it's completed? Should I scan it? Go straight to the computer? There's so much safety in the digital world. So much control. I can resize, reshape, warp, and twist to my little heart's content. Or, should I keep working it by hand, tackle the risk and the excitement of the unknown. The answer is finding a balance, but that relationship can change for every project.
All this dribble is just to say that I don't know just yet how Stella will be completed, but there's a lot of really cool things that happen along the way. Stella is a journey, and in order to embrace this creative process, I've decided to open the doors of my studio and let a few peanut shells find a new home.
Find this illustration and a few others in my shop.