Rediscovering My Illustrations
How going through my basement and attic helped me to remember what I have created!
The Working Method
I have been an illustrator for most of my career. I prefer not to say how long, but let’s just say, I was working in the pre-digital era, and now embrace both traditional and digital media as part of my work flow.
Honestly, more of my work for the last decade has been finished digitally- after hand sketches and some watercolor concept work I completed all my work using Photoshop.
But there was a period of almost 15 years where I created hundreds of images for children’s books. I painted book covers, short story illustrations, picture book art- usually using the same process that I taught myself in trial and error fashion. The basic process went like this:
- Concept rough thumbnail sketch
- Color sketch with pencil and colored pencils
- Work on finished art. Always on a gessoed panel. I used to use masonite. But traveling to the city back and forth that got heavy! So I switched to heavy illustration board – usually Strathmore paper.
- Paintings would be created using acrylic underpainting using brush and airbrush to set the tones. Colored pencils would state the initial color palette and further establish the tonal transitions. Then more acrylic painting from large to small sable brushes. Finally, glazes of oil paints would “pull together” the values and colors. In my opinion, there is nothing like the glaze of oil paints for true color and values.
As i said, I have painted hundreds of images, from romance to science fiction using this working method. And most of them got stored in either the basement or the attic- protected but not really looked at for over 15 years.
So- in January 2015 I decided to FINALLY collect the paintings together into one place- placed on a metal shelf and sorted out by subject. I was thinking that maybe there would be interest in these images. That people would like to see paintings- and possibly be interested in quality prints of my painting-illustrations. It would be great if they could have a “use” outside of the initial purpose of illustrating a story.
The Secondary Discovery
I had recently read an article in the NY Times by Heidi Julavits “Turning Clutter into Joy”. This essay took a different approach to the prevailing wisdom that one should purge themselves of useless possessions- the flotsam and jetsam of life that accumulates over the course of a lifetime.
Yes I did find lots of useless things- detritus that was definitely of no use to anyone- least of all me. But in the process of throwing out these remnants of life and previous work, I began to run across pieces of art that I had totally forgotten about. Or maybe I remembered them, but in a kind of a dim way, like a faded image on photo paper. These were drawings, sketches, paintings – IDEAS! that I had almost totally forgotten about.
I will admit that not all are great- some are just good- and others just blew me away. Digital techniques have their own usages, and I have been about to expand the range of what I can do with Photoshop, After Effects and other software.
So I have photographed all my newly discovered paintings with my digital camera, and have selected some to be shown on my website, and on Etsy, to have them available as digital archival quality prints.
Old is New Again- and Vice Versa?
With social media- and sites like Etsy, Instagram and Pinterest, I can share my art in ways that didn’t exist when these paintings were originally created. This process is fascinating to me as an illustrator and an artist. Old work becomes new in another context, and going forward my newest work will still be created using the techniques that i perfected in painting those images that originally were mere illustrations.
Please check out my new shop on Etsy! https://www.etsy.com/shop/LindbergIllustration?ref=hdr_shop_menu
