Issue link: https://nbm.uberflip.com/i/1482193
this couldn't just be any kind of shark. It had to be a big, bad great white, beach bum enjoying sunset fishing while sipping a tropical drink. Putting it in chair was challenging since sharks rarely sit. What shark would be worth his salt without teeth? Lots of teeth! We opened those jaws nice and big for a winning smile. e hard line work for the outline was done in Adobe Illustrator. We made subtle changes to proportions and line weights. Like an oral surgeon, we moved each indi- vidual tooth and scaled them appropriately. e other accessories, tiki cup, beach chair, sign and surf board were completed in the same manner. Once the outlines were made to separate elements, we col- ored in the detail. e pen tool allowed us to make paths for the smooth parts for superb rounding and straight aways. Like traditional painting, we blocked in the base colors as the foundation in which to build the rest of the finer ren- dering. Digital art is not so different from the traditional in that it is just another medium. It's not as messy as oils, how- ever. e base colors were now on sepa- rate layers for selection purposes and acted like masks. e painting process was then applied, changing values and color with- out disrupting other color blocks within a specific area. e sandy beach framed in the bot- tom and tiny grains disbursed as if actual sand. Under the Filter menu we used the Blur option and applied a Gaussian blur. By changing the Layer mode on the blurred sand from Normal to Dissolve. Boom! Sand. e sunset was created through a series of photographic references. ose col- ors had an impact. Many of the elements came from photo references as well. A little realism was great for reference and G R A P H I C S - P R O. C O M N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 2 • G R A P H I C S P R O 4 1 Being digital, and no screen limitations, meant the sky was the limit in colorization. We could use hundreds of colors and expect beautiful results. As is so often the case with us, this too began with a pencil concept. Putting it in a chair was challenging since sharks rarely sit. The hard-line work for the outline was done in Adobe Illustrator. We made subtle changes to proportions and line weights.