This semester, from January 30th, to today, I worked on what is called ‘Special Projects’, with the Art Academy from W.H. Croxford. My project was a series of 50 digital drawings that imitates a ‘National Geographic’ magazine about different folklore creatures and other urban legends. The name of this series is ‘Worldwide Legends’.
The digital paintings are in my illustration style. Each digital canvas was 14x18in each. I split each canvas in half with a straight line, and input a box for where the subject’s text would go at the end. In each drawing, I used many different filters and layers to achieve the proper atmosphere in my pieces. These could include ‘glow’ layers for lighting, and ‘multiply’ layers for the shadows. My entire series was fairly simple, as in each piece I did unique backgrounds to throw the subject[s] in. There were a few pieces that were slightly more challenging. Those would be images such as “Black Volga”, or “The Dullahan”, which featured either vehicles, or horses in their drawings, which are things I do not normally draw on a daily basis.
This series has several unifying factors. These unifying elements include the alternated text on each ‘spread’, in the same font size. Each title, detailing exactly what creature the subject was, above the text is another element. The subjects all have some unifying factor, in one way or another. Most of the subjects I chose to draw have similar elements in many cases. For example, many of the subjects I drew were some form of humanoid entity, such as ghosts, or vampire-like creatures.
In conclusion, this series was a blast to work on. From the research and writing stage, to actually bringing the illustrations to life, this was an amazing project to work on. I enjoyed learning new facts about the creatures, even when I thought I knew most of the lore around them.