The Very Edge of New Harare

Another illustration for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery magazine is in the books! I'll take you through some process and behind the scenes stuff.

First of all, this story was great. That's my favorite part about writing for AHMM is reading these great, interesting, mysterious little stories. I doodle in the margins of the pages while I read. This story, The Very Edge of New Harare, was about a city in Africa that was transitioning from rural to urban, forcing the native animals away. Meanwhile there are some murders on the edge of town. I don't want to give too much away... Read the excerpt (this link may only work until the next issue is live), or you should just get the magazine!

I put all of the thumbnails into a PDF document with a description of what's going on; sometimes the thumbs are so loose it's hard to convey what the final image would actually look like (click to see larger):

The art director chose #1, which is a giraffe overlaid with African wilderness, juxtaposed against an urban scene. This was in reference to a scene that's described when a giraffe is suddenly in the middle of a highway. The giraffe looked lost and confused about losing his home.

My in-laws just returned from an Africa trip with hundreds of amazing photos, including some great close-ups of giraffes. I gathered all my references:

And started working on the final. That's the other great thing about AHMM; we go straight to final instead of needing a final sketch in between. It makes the process feel more like "mine" rather than "drawing for the man." I do a final drawing for my own purposes though; make sure the artwork size is correct, get placement and composition stuff figured out, etc:

Then I trace the illustration onto Bristol paper using my most favoritest Hi-Tec C pen:

I almost always get scared before I put the paint over the drawing, so I scan a copy of the final ink part before I paint on it:

Here it is after paint:

....Which felt too flat; not contrasty enough. At the illustration Academy, I learned that Photoshop is our enemy, but I think that's a crock. It's a wonderful tool. Just look at Yuko Shimizu's style. So I started messing around with lightening and darkening the background:

I kind of liked the last one, but AHMM prints on newsprint so I can't go too dark with the overall layout. The others just felt too boring. So I tried reversing out the background just to give it some "oomph," again playing with light and dark options: 

Now we're talking. But the left version was too dark, right option too bland. I ultimately decided on a version in between with a few tweaks to the reversed background (I didn't like the cars or signs reversed out) and we had our final! Thanks, Photoshop!!! 

I've done another illustration for AHMM since this one, and another is in the works. They plan REALLY far in advance so it will be a few months before I can post either of those. Thanks for the assignment AHMM, and for reading my dear followers (if you made it this far you deserve some sort of award!)

-cat

Cat Scott Larimore
Louisville Graphic Designer and Illustrator
@gato108
www.CatScottArt.com

The Real Celebrities - Illustration for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

When Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine contacted me to do an illustration for one of their stories, I jumped at the opportunity. Fellow Illustration Academy graduates Edward Kinsella, Andrew Wright, and Jorge Mascarenhas had all done really cool work for the magazine so it made me feel like I was joining the ranks of these uber-talented illustrators.

The story was an entertaining suspense called “The Real Celebrities” about a murder amongst some costumed would-be actors in Hollywood (excerpted here). It’s always fun to draw some famous people...especially Hugh Jackman.

I’m happy to have another example of my “Sketchbook Style” illustration. This style is taking over my illustration portfolio because it is my favorite way to work. The tediousness of the cross-hatching step appeals to the nerdy analytical side of me, and the looseness and impressionism of the paint application step helps keep it fun and spontaneous.

Stay tuned for another illustration I did for them in the August/September issue, and a website update!

Thanks for reading!

-Cat

Cat Scott
Louisville Illustrator and Graphic Designer
www.CatScott.com

Derby Etiquette Illustration for Louisville Magazine

Louisville Magazine, contacted me to do an illustration for their Derby issue this year, and of COURSE I jumped at the opportunity! It's always such an exciting issue to be a part of. The article is about Derby Etiquette and discusses how NOT to be "that guy" when you are out at Churchill Downs.

Below are the thumbnails I sent the art director:

She chose the bottom right option. Here's the final drawing before I took it to final:

And since I know you love seeing some behind-the-scenes action, here's a few of the reference photos we took. Pardon the poor white balancing, these aren't usually for the public's eye, they are just for getting a hand shape correct or a shoulder in place.

Till next time! p.s. Go Knights!

Cat Scott
Louisville Graphic Designer and Illustrator
www.CatScott.com

La Scala Milan Illustration

Just when one book design was wrapping up, another project began. This time it's for a book about learning to love opera, penned by Louisville author, speaker, and expert on the arts, Thomson Smillie. What is especially exciting about this project is that he wants to sprinkle it with lots of fun illustrations by moi!

For the cover, we went with the striking facade of Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

I love how my new "sketchbook" illustration style (which is the only style I use now) allows me to be more impressionistic. There is no need to get caught up in the details which keeps the illustrations loose and fresh. Thomson said it best; "You don't need to draw every architectural detail of the facade for someone to recognize it as La Scala. Either you recognize it, or you don't!"

This project should be wrapping up by summer time, so hopefully I will have lots of opera-related illustrations to share with you.

Till next time,

cat

Cat Scott
Louisville Graphic Designer and Illustrator
www.CatScott.com

illustrations for enGrossed.me

Another thing that has kept me busy for the past several months is a full time gig I started in October at a competitive intelligence firm called Sedulo Group. I'm their Creative Director and oversee everything design and marketing related, like the website(s), tradeshow materials, newsletter, and even powerpoint presentations. They keep me pretty busy.

Our managing partner, Heath, started a blog called enGrossed.me to write about competitive intelligence for people who don't really understand what it is, like for example, ME four months ago.

When I first started building the articles, I looked at some stock images but quickly realized a few things:

• Stock images are super cheesy.
• The illustrations are way too expensive.
• It was impossible to find an image that conveyed the exact concept I wanted to illustrate.

I thought of one of my favorite sites about web design, A List Apart, and how they use a simple illustration for their articles. I thought, hey, I can do that! Heath loved the idea. Then I just needed a "style."

The goal was to do two posts a week, and these illustrations were in addition to my already ginormous pile of work, so I needed to be able to do these quickly and easily.

Here's the process:

First I do a very rough drawing. I never do a bunch of thumbnails, I just go with my gut on these. For this particular article about using competitive intelligence to see the future, PhotoBooth helped me pose for my own reference shot for the hand.

I scan the sketch and tweak it in photoshop.

I print out the tweaked sketch, throw it on my light box (My favorite two guesses as to what my old crappy lightbox is: a time machine, and an 8-track player.) I then trace the drawing onto Bristol paper using my brush pen.

I scan the brush drawing into Photoshop and then proceed to layer it up with multiplied layers of black tones, and then top it off with one darkened layer of color.

All in all, the entire process from concept and sketching to posting to the blog takes about 2 hours. And in the end, we think it's well worth it to have a fun, consistent image for each of the articles posted to the blog.

cat

Cat Scott
Louisville Graphic Designer and Illustrator
www.CatScott.com

New Cat Scott Logo

I created a new logo for my website and blog. Created in my "sketchbook" style on Bristol paper with my trusty Hi-Tec C pen and some acrylic + gac 100 drybrushing.

Cat Scott - Louisville Graphic Designer and Illustrator

Racino Downs

The January issue of Louisville Magazine is out on a newsstand near you!* The gang at LouMag needed an illustration for an important feature article about how legalizing slot machines could save Kentucky's horse industry.

I'll do my best to sum up the multi-faceted and interesting story: Other states have legalized gambling to fund their horse racing industries and are thus able to fund giant purses for winning horses. Therefore, if someone wants to make a lot of money racing horses, they are going to move to Indiana or Pennsylvania where the money is. Kentucky's rich horse history and culture are suffering because Churchill Downs simply cannot afford to keep up with such lavish prizes without legalizing casinos.

During the thumbnail process, I kept thinking that the story really boiled down to the horses that were going to win or lose - they were truly the ones betting on a win. So I sketched a horse at a slot machine. The team loved it, and I got to do my first "Animal Acting Like a Human" illustration!

Thanks to reference photos and the artistic license to make joints bend in opposite ways, I drew up this lovely Gambling Horse.

One of my other thumbnails ended up working well as a spot illustration (below). You LOST fans will notice that I used some of The Numbers as the prize amount... I'm such a nerd.

Another fun project for LouMag under my belt.  Looking forward to the next assignment!

Thanks for reading,

Cat

*Unless you are one of the millions of people not in Kentuckiana

Dream Holiday

I had an illustration in mind for my holiday card this year. I had even collected reference materials and started on the preliminary sketches.

Then, I woke up last Sunday morning from a weird dream: I found myself in a storage room for an apparel company with someone who was showing me all of their old marketing materials. This one piece I stumbled upon, which I think was a jeans hang tag, really struck me. I turned it over and studied it and thought to my Dream Self, "I could totally do this!" I woke up shortly thereafter, grabbed a post-it and jotted down what I could remember.

In the dream, it was double sided, so I sketched what I could remember about both sides. But since I don't really need a jeans hang tag, and I was in need of a Christmas card design, I changed some things around. I gotta say I'm pretty proud of my Dream Self. I wish I could always work out a solution to an image while sleeping - that would be Ultimate Multi Tasking!

Dangers of Cycling: Louisville Magazine

The November issue of Louisville Magazine is out, and inside you'll find one of my illustrations (so go out and buy one now, people of Kentuckiana!). 

The article, written by avid Louisville cyclist Joe Ward, draws attention to the dangers facing cyclists and the unfortunate deaths that have occurred because of drivers' negligence.

"Bicyclists on the roads are not the problem. The problem is motorists who don’t recognize their responsibility for the lives and limbs of their fellow citizens. It’s time for serious attention to the motor vehicle as a deadly missile."

Sadly, unless alcohol or excessive speed were cause for the deadly accident, the driver walks free and clear (well, except the excessive guilt they will probably live with, hopefully a la Crime and Punishment). 

Mr. Ward questions this lack of penalty and offers this solution:

"When a person kills somebody with his car and there are no mitigating circumstances, he or she should at very least lose his driver’s license for life.

Put them on bicycles. "

postscript:  These murderous drivers are the reason I have not touched my road bike since I moved to Los Angeles, where drivers are the most self involved, distracted, and ruthless of all!!

Welcome Back Steve Jobs

Welcome Back Steve Jobs, originally uploaded by Gato81.

A self-initiated assignment to welcome Steve back to the Apple world. It had been a while since I had done a celebrity portrait, and this was a really fun one to do. Thanks to Katy, Rachel, Alli, and Jason for posing as audience members, and to the Keynote speech on Apple.com for providing reference footage!

The only thing that bugs me is my scan. Not matter how long I fiddle with the controls, I can't get the vibrancy and subtlety of values from the actual illustration board. I have an Epson Workforce 600 - does anyone else have issues scanning with that?

It makes me want to attempt some photoshop illustrations. James O'Brien and Yuko Shimizu (to name a few) do a wonderful job of incorporating hand drawn art with beautiful textures to create pieces that appear hand-made.

I'll give it a shot in my next self-initiated piece, but in the meantime I have a few projects that need my attention.

cheers,

cat

Teaser

I spent all weekend working on the final for my latest illustration assignment (small preview above):

• Friday night while watching movies.


• Saturday afternoon next to the pool.


• Saturday night while Jason and Dana played "Call to Duty."


• Sunday afternoon while trying not to melt in our apartment.


• Finishing it up (and blogging about it) while Jason sleeps soundly next to me.

I really need a new technique that isn't so damn time consuming.

Oh, the nerves...

My sources tell me that the August issue of Louisville Magazine is on newsstands, and another one of my pieces graces the pages of this finely designed periodical.

This time around, we reverted to my "traditional" illustration style (the last assignment was my "sketchbook" style). The story is rather confusing, but I'll do my best to sum it up. Basically, a neurosurgeon's clinic who did surgeries for one hospital (UofL) signed up to do surgeries for another hospital (Norton) without telling UofL. UofL was forced to fire the clinic, and chaos ensued. It boiled down to money and contracts, trying to work for two separate hospitals, etc. The thumnail process for this was longer than usual as the editor, and the art director, and I struggled to find a strong solution that made sense. Some of my thumbnails are below.


We settled on the final thumbnail because it was a straight solution for a multi-layered story. I then proceeded with a final sketch and a quick color study so Kelly could begin choosing colors for the story layout.


For this piece my technique was a combination of a gouache wash, prismacolors, turpentine (used to melt the prismacolor and paint with the waxy pigment), and the bright light coming from the surgical lamps was created using washes of white acrylic with my favorite medium, GAC 100. Here's a closeup of the piece so you can see the texture.



Overall, I'm pleased with the piece, and so is the magazine (which is most important!). I would love to hear what you think, too!

Cheers,

Cat

Dysfunction Junction

I created this illustration recently for Louisville Magazine, and it's finally out on newsstands! The art director requested I use my "sketchbook style" which she discovered via my newly redesigned website, www.catscott.com. I'm really glad she suggested it - I thought the grittiness and messiness of the line work really worked well with the story, which was about Louisville's Spaghetti Junction and what a mess it has become. They're currently thinking about upping the concrete to 24 lanes - how completely ludicrous is that? By 2080 Louisville will become a tangled mess of freeways. I tend to side with the grassroots movement 8664 which seeks to replace the highways with tree lined boulevards and parks. We'll see what happens!

Here's the spread in the magazine with the art director's typesetting over my illo. It was kind of hard to leave space when you don't really know what's going to happen there. Now that I see the final, I think I should have done a wash over the "reserved space" but I didn't know how that would interfere with her typography.



Detail of the drawing. I used a Hi-Tec C blue pen and then did washes over the drawing with Acrylic mixed with Gac 100.



I just got another assignment from the folks at LouMag, for which I am always thankful.

Thanks for reading, and have a happy and safe 4th of July!

White Wedding

My cousin married her best friend, Mark, in March 2008 in Louisville. They were married at Holy Spirit Church (where I attended grade school) during the biggest snow storm in a decade. For Christmas, I commemorated their one-of-a-kind wedding day experience with a small drawing. If you look closely, you can see a little bride and groom on the doorstep.

Publicity is good

If it isn't completely obvious by the giant scrolling sidebar on the right side of this page, I have prints of my artwork available through ImageKind.com. Today I was featured on their homepage! I don't know how long it will be up so check it out while you can. They are featuring the illustration I did of my dad playing the cello.

Dear cello enthusiasts: I am aware that his arm is not in the proper position. I stylized it because I'm an artist and I just can.

Thanks for stopping by!

Doom of Love in Small Spaces

I can't believe I never posted this... I did this illustration over the winter for Realms of Fantasy Magazine. It was for a really interesting, allegorical story called "The Doom of Love in Small Spaces" by Ken Scholes. It was in the May issue.. unfortunately, a quick google search did not reveal any online versions of the story.

Reinventing Louisville

I did this illustration for the May issue of Louisville Magazine. It is for an article called "Reinventing Louisville" by John Gilderbloom & Matt Hanka. The article throws out some ideas to make Louisville a bustling, thriving downtown. The whole issue is about downtown Louisville - plans for the future, what it's like to live downtown, etc. It's a fantastic issue - I encourage any fans of Louisville to purchase a back issue.

Louisville Magazine

Here is the illustration I did for the special education issue of Louisville Magazine, out now. The article covered the possibility of a couple of public schools in Louisville going to a same-sex format. Some say that separating the sexes eliminate hormone-related distractions and creates a learning environment that can cater to the learning differences between males and females (females are more abstract, literary thinkers, while males are more competitive and mathematical in their learning habits). The other school of thought believes the disctractions present in adolescent co-educational environments are something children need to cope with in order to survive the real world. In my illustration, I have the teacher standing divided between boys & girls, confused as to how to teach both in one environment when they learn so differently.

Nature Lady

This is the special project I have referred to several times. I volunteered my services to a company called Terressentials, a wonderful USDA certified organic and all natural body care product company. I learned a lot working with the kind people there - they are SO PASSIONATE about having products that are healthy for the soul, body, and environment. Diana, one of the founders, believes so strongly in her products that she ATE some of their body cream to prove to the government that their product was deserving of the elusive USDA certification for organic goods. I encourage you to go to the Terressentials website to read a bit more about them.

Unfortunately, the packaging-redesign project was put on hold, so they are unsure if they will be using my art (originally intended for shampoo, which I hear is to die for - I am ordering a couple bottles myself). But it was still a really cool project and I was very lucky to be able to learn a lot about organic products from these super cool people. And I get a lot of great body care products to boot - you have to try their body oils! They leave your skin silky, smooth, and subtly scented all day long.

Orange Blossom

This is the illustration I spoke of. This is a special gift for my dear friend Leigh Ann and her husband, Jeff. I don't want to get into the gory details, but I will tell you that the orange blossom is a symbol of fertility, love, and togetherness. The bee is fertilizing the flower. So it's sort of a good luck charm for them.