Research, but not in the Pete Townshend way.

Here's an over-elaborate post for an under-whelming illustration I did a few weeks ago. I'm not sure why I saved process shots so regularly. I guess I must have thought I was onto something really interesting at the time. How wrong I was.

This is the reference photo I took on Easter Sunday near Rottingdean. Something about taking a photo of a little girl playing on the end of a big rock thing and shrieking as she tries to avoid the salty foam, and then going on to post said picture on the internet feels wrong.
I wanted to capture a wave crashing against the rocks and rising up, but could only wait for about ten seconds, what with the very real threat of arrest.



I built up the drawing in layers, on four or five sheets of paper, and somehow the girl, being the hardest bit to draw, just got left out.
Here's the first layer, simple pen and ink:



This spray I made by flicking ink on a page, and scanning and colouring it. It probably looks best at this point:



Some block colours:



Shadows made up of scanned painted ink, coloured and overlaid at varying opacities. This really didn't work as well as I hoped it would, and the colours are wrong too.



And then, just to make sure it was definitely rubbish, I put in a load of silly flares.



So there you go. Pretty shit, but hey, at least I didn't design that 2012 logo!