Illustrations of Biblical Proportions

I just wrapped up a good sized project for New Spring Church. And let me tell ya, it was fun. It was a lot of work, but fun. This project met my creative goals I have had for a while now, and helped me see it through. 

The style is something I have been playing with for some time, but in black and white. A loose inky look. And prior to that, it was a solid, hard outline style. So I created a comic strip to exercise my creative muscles and see what else I could do. It felt good to work in a very loose brush look. I loved the contrast. And I started to get requests from clients that wanted that look, so I pushed it. 

Mars Hill Church had gave me the opportunity to use the inky look. It was faster and  and enjoyable to work in. And I could see it going to the next level. If only it was in color. Through that work, and posting samples on dribbble, New Spring Church hired me to work on a series of Biblical work for their kids ministry. Yes please!  The art director was great about letting artists explore the space and do what we what we want. So inky outlines, color and texture it is! 

This project wasn't only exciting on a personal level, but artistically as well. With just over 20 illustrations, it was interesting to see the growth of the style. While I really like each illustration, some I adore. I jumped from chapter to chapter, not working in order. Attempting to put off the more difficult concepts till later. The easy pages I was working on let me iron out the style more and more. But since I had to go back and do the hard illustrations, it helped stagger the growth. You can see the style get more polished as it went. But since the page order was mixed, it worked as a visual buffer. If I started with illustration "one", and worked in order till the end, you would see that growth chronologically. I did had to go back over some to make sure they were consistent with the look and feel, even though there was that growth. 

Working on this project, I also new that it would give me the chance to play with backgrounds. I am a freak for character development. But all my characters exist in white space. Now I had to put Jesus, Moses and Noah all in backgrounds!  I didn't realize it till I was done, but that was another element that helped me take this body of work to the next level. Lots of art directors in publishing look for art that has something going on, not just a mascot. So, all in all, I am very happy with the results. Got a very kind worded letter of recommendation as well. And to top it off, I realized even more my desire to kid related work. My original artistic goal was to do work for an older audience. I shy away from saying adult as not to give the wrong impression. But I wanted to make art that I thought was more mature and business oriented. My style lends itself to a kid friendly look, even when I apply it to boring Human Resources related work. If you are looking for a fun style for your next project, I would love to help out. For more samples of my work, check out portfolio!