Still working on the Hairy Typography series slowly, but surely. Starting right from the start of the alphabet, these letters will be pure hairy goodness. No little parasites swimming around, or a face. When the entire 26 letters are complete (and maybe some numbers too) I’ll debate whether to add them in or not.
Yesss! I finally took the time and effort to set up my annoying tripod to film a full length video of one of my Hairy Letters (mostly) start to finish. It took the whole afternoon to film and the evening to edit.
I wanted to include here a detailed explanation on how I render hair since a lot of people have asked me how I do it. My method is pretty simple! It’s understanding how hair moves is what’s tricky.
I’m very minimal: all I use is a light H2 pencil and a 0.5mm mechanical pencil. The reason why I prefer mechanical pencils is because the tip is always fine so I don’t have to constantly sharpen it.
I use my H2 pencil to block in light grey segments of hair. Highlights are never completely white which is why I like to have a preliminary wash of tone. Having a gradient of light to medium will add dimension.
I find achieving hair with more move and body works well when I separate it in groups that weave inbetween each other. I take my mechanical pencil and do light strokes on the outer edges of these groups, linking them together with the occasional connected strand of hair.
Hair is never completely uniform, no matter how much gel you want to put in it! Tousle that baby! Put in some random sporadic strands creeping on the edges, maybe some loops too.
And that is how I draw hair. Hope this was useful and answered some of your questions.
Mock tea packaging illustration for Chinese Jasmine flavour. I drink jasmine tea all the time, and it has a very heady bitterness to it, so I decided on a dark earthy palette to match the one I’ve always tasted on my tongue.
This is how the illustration looks like within three panels of the box, logo right in the middle.
Final pencil drawing on bristol. For anyone interested, this original drawing will be available in my shop in my next spring restock this late April!
A couple of mock book cover illustrations for two classic stories: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.
Fahrenheit 451 (2011)
The Metamorphosis (2011)
This was a fun exercise using a predetermined color palette; purples! I don’t use purple very often so it was a good challenge trying to make it work that veered away from my color bias.
Illustrative typography of Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void. It’s a psychedelic melodrama, a film that’s an experience all of its own full of sex and human sentiments.
My way of combining different themes of the film into type was to use the shape of a circle to symbolize cycling life, the sperm and egg, the brain, and the vast emptiness of the void. The colors are jittering out of the lines, like a rainbow acid trip.
With the background:
This is the original linework, inked with a micron pen and colored digitally.
I’m really like all this illustrative typography stuff. It makes letters a lot less sterile than fonts (as beautiful as they can be).
