Illustrator Spills The Vegetables, Admits He’s Not Perfect

You’ve heard of spilling the beans? Well, I’m spilling all the vegetables here, and confessing two things:

1. I make a lot of little mistakes when I draw
2. I sometimes struggle with an idea, knowing it’s got potential, but that it needs work

Yes, I know you’re shocked, but don’t do anything rash, like dropping out of the Mark Armstrong Fan Club… : (

I think it’s good to demystify art. So often we see final art and unconsciously assume it all came easily, that the creator must be a genius, specially gifted, etc, etc. The truth is, the process is often messy– at least for me.

Here’s a recent example: I had an idea for a visual pun– a joke about a podcast being made from a real “pod.” Here’s my initial sketch:

I could see a number of problems. The musical notes don’t make sense. A podcast usually involves instruction or discussion; they’re not music programs like you’d hear on the radio.

The proportions are wrong: a pea pod is a lot smaller than your average eggplant, for example. A giant pea pod doesn’t make any sense.

And the orientation is off: the tomato is facing in a different direction than the other veggies. I also thought the carrot should be taller, to better frame the right side of the drawing.

Finally, I wanted to do something more ambitious than just a simple cartoon with a spoken caption.

With all that in mind, here’s my revised line drawing:

Oops! Looks like poor Mr. Broccoli got the hook. What else is different? Here’s a side-by-side compare:

Biggest changes: the pod’s much smaller, the broccoli’s gone, the tomato’s now facing the same way as everyone else, the carrot’s taller, and the entire veggie group has been moved back so it’s slightly behind the pea pod.

I did the original sketch on paper, but I do all my line revisions directly in Photoshop. I’ll use the Pen tool if I need to draw an additional line, but I’ve found I can usually copy and paste bits and pieces of existing lines to get what I need.

For example: the tomato’s new eyes are simply dupes of another vegetable’s eyes. And the tomato’s new smile is simply his old smile flipped horizontally and rotated a bit.

I wrestled with the concept for several days– where was I going with this??

Finally I thought of the term vegetable matter, and I had my solution: a program called Vegetable Matters that would discuss topics of interest to… vegetables.

It’s always a mistake to use too many different fonts in a design, but I decided to go with three here, and I like the result:

Believe it or not, the really hard work was done: an idea that works, and a drawing that works. The rest was a series of color experiments and Photoshop techniques. A lot of time and effort, sure, but I knew I was on solid ground.

Here’s the color final:

I know what you’re thinking: could I buy a print for all the geeks and vegetarians on my Christmas list? Absolutely. It’s available on my Fine Art America website.

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I don’t listen to too many podcasts– how about you?

Did you realize vegetables are intellectually curious before reading this post?

Do you still love me even though I’m not perfect??

Hope you’ll leave a comment.

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