Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Process

The Squid and The Whale. 12 x 12 inches Pen & Ink and Digital color/texture.

Here is a picture I created recently. The battle between a Giant Squid and a Sperm Whale is an intriguing concept. Here are two modern monsters, that actually exist, battling for supremacy in the shroud of our mysterious oceans. Besides just making an interesting image it begs many questions since it has never been documented. Who attacked who? Are there squids large enough to kill whales? Do they hunt each other?

I have been working on a lot of t-shirt designs lately and I was recently told I should do a design with "Nautical Stars." I wont pretend to be a Nautical buff but I do like monsters. I thought I could do a design I liked and incorporate the stars too. I went ahead and drew the squid and whale in mortal combat; pictured below.

I used multiple photo references for each creature to figure out their anatomy. I then used a circular composition by using the creatures poses, placement and foreshortening. I then inked the pencil drawing; pictured below.

Afterwords, I made a high-resolution scan. I cleaned up the drawing a little in Adobe PhotoShop CS4. I placed the image into Adobe Illustrator CS4 and used the Live trace tool to turn the art into vectors. I arranged some vector stars and paint spatters, I had on file, to create the background. I used "Nautical Stars" around the whale because whales seem to be a big part of nautical history. I used the spatters around the squid because squids ink. The result is the following picture; shown below.

Finally I took the image and tried it in black and reversed, as white, on different colored t-shirt templates. I was happiest with the white ink on a light blue t-shirt combination; pictured below.


I hope people like the final product and I also hope that all the hard work pays-off. I liked the concept so much that I went back and did a more artistic treatment of the original art; See the top picture.

4 comments:

FrankenBarry said...

Wow, that's one tough squid... looks like he's fighting that whale with one arm tied behind his back! Great work, Josh, I like both versions... the shirt looks really cool!

Brine Blank said...

Only one complaint...I DON'T HAVE ONE...awesome awesome rendering and shirt...great concept...how does one go about ordering such a shirt as this...

I saw a show that had the 'teeth' from the suckers embedded into the coating on a submarine or ship...and they discussed during the war when a ship was sunk that a couple of people that were 'hanging' off the rafts were pulled in and attacked. I know that may seem far fetched to some but they talked about the ferocious nature of certain squid and had interviews with divers that had been attacked...

Josh (musarter) said...

Thank you both for the comments.

Brine: I will let you know about the shirts if they get printed. And yes, squids are strange and mysterious real monsters.

g1toons said...

gotta keep it up, I just ended up forcing myself to draw as i spend too much time in front of the computer animating, plus i love the sound of paper, I need to do one of those IF i was check them out i think i have only ever did one and that was years ago, i shall be checking back as i am the blog police, and i will hand out ticket