What Happens When You Mess Up Drawing a Hobo Riding a Can of Shaving Cream

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Hobos? Shaving cream?? Just another day at the office here.

I thought it might be fun to give you a peek behind the scenes at Mark Armstrong Illustration.

I recently wrote up a little incident that occurred back when I was in high school. A Halloween story which I’ll share in my next post.

I needed a header image. I decided on a naughty teenager riding a big can of shaving cream. Hopefully that’ll make sense when you read the story.

I still do all my line drawings by hand. Here’s how this one turned out.

Naturally you’re wondering: Why the extra disembodied head?

I make mistakes in line drawings. There are always things that are a bit “off.”

Here, the placement of the features in the original head say “adult,” not “teen,” and the upper body’s a little too long for the lower body.

I drew a corrected head/face off to the side. I knew I could “change heads” using my image-editing program (Apple’s Pixelmator Pro) after I scanned the line drawing into my computer.

Here’s a compare of the original line drawing and the corrected version.

The red arrows spotlight the changes.

I swapped heads and moved the new head forward. I shortened the torso, reduced the size of the hands, and changed the angle of the reins.

The resulting posture looks a lot more correct: someone hunched over in the saddle, riding a bucking bronco.

I also moved one of the devil’s eyes– it just bugged me.

Next step: adding color to the corrected line drawing.

I kept it simple. Just flat color, no special lighting effects.

I often lay in a temporary solid color background layer. It makes it easier for me to see if I “colored outside the lines.”

You might notice that at some point I decided the hat should be flying off the kid’s head. Not surprising. I make little tweaks like that as I go along.

Here’s a compare of the original line drawing and the corrected color final.

I’ll share the complete illustration (there was a bit more to it), along with my Halloween story, in the next post.

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About Mark: I’m an illustrator specializing in humor, branding, social media, and content marketing. My images are different, like your brand needs to be.

You can view my portfolio, and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Questions? Send me an email.

Follow @mrstrongarm