Art & Inspiration "How I Draw Rusty Nuts" or "Hot Rod Poster 101"

I was suppose to do this with Chuckles garage and his "Strange Bird" art... but time had slipped away and this technique is very similar..... well.....not really....
Anyways..if your interested stay tooned.

It all begins with the phone call and discussing what the client needs.In this case...JalopyMike(Mike S.) have been working together for his Killer show in MD at the National Guard Armory.I attended last year with the RB guys and had a great time.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=525406&highlight=jalopyrama&showall=1

Great venue and amazing old rods and customs...a great show worth attending....
So Mike and I talked a bit and we wanted to stay with the same kinda feel as last years poster...
so I did some loose and fast ruffs and came up with a few ideas...some along the same train of thought.and ones off base.






The flying hotrod was picked and off I went....
(well...not literally off, cause i am busy....but I picked away as time was allowed.)

So here is how I start......
First off...i work commercially which means i do a lot of digital work.
And this in my books is pure commercial work...I do it day in,day out.
I used to work traditionally but in the early 90's, the blood was on the wall sort to speak and if you did not get on the bus..... you were gonna starve.
So saying all that.i work on a mac and a tablet...and messaround in a Corel program called Painter.
It is the ONLY program in my mind that even comes close to mimicking traditional tools and weaponery of the good ole days.

I take my ruff chosen, make the document at the specific size required(in this case,18x24 with a 1/4 bleed all round).Drop the lor-es ruff into place,scale it up to the size that suits me....and throw the opacity back to about 20% because I will be drawing on top of this on a layer.A layer a sheet of make believe digital paper that you work on top of.
In Painter...I have many tools I have created..pens,pencils,pastels,oilbrushes,airbrushes,etc,etc.The program comes loaded with pre-set tools(A TON!) and i use them... but I really prefer to customize my own.(hey..I am a hotrodder...right?)
So after the document is made and ready to go,I start to draw and ink.
I should state, this is the old comic book style stuff... kinda i guess...I have done it many many times before.
So you can see i start to ink and clean up the flying hotrod first(no reason.I just started there)





As you see on the layers window(right side) I work in several layers and collapse them as time goes on..saving the document each time and renaming it.Why? I do this because if i go to far or screw up.I can then go back and start where I felt i messed up.
Here is more progression of the inking.




Moving along i continue to play out the line work and balance the art.I start to draw the foreground images and at any time I can move the different layers around to tweek the art as i feel it needs it.In the image below I turned up the opacity of my 1st ruff layer(I did two) to check how my compostion looked....





Below..you can see the layers window and the different layer i have off and On.....




Next I start inking the wheels and tires.... using elipse tools in painter.I can create any elipse or shape in this program and twist,turn or modify as i see fit.



Filling in areas with a mask tool and using a stipple airbrush for an cheap parlor trick.



Nearly finished inking and created a deep long shadow that gives the vehicle air and speed.




On to the BG and remaining foreground.......
Splatter brushes and Pens,chalks and airbrush..I use all i have at my side for this style and purpose of job. Nearly done the inking,I will then save this art (a version)for the T-SHIRT portion of the job when that comes time......






At this point i am satisfied of the job so far for the print..... i am ready to throw color down and get some values down......
I collaspe all the outstanding layers into one and turn the default to multiply.
This lets the layer become transparent if you will and color can pass thru grey areas and solid white space.
Throwing some color with an airbrush and pastel markers to begin with.....




Plaing with the basic yella//blue combo(its suppose to be at night! ha ah ha)
I start to lay it down...
Getting more detail in the image....




More coloring and detail.....




Ok...lights on!...I have been up till now working under my black line image(on a layer or several) now I start some layers above the line work to work over top it.....More color and detail.....





Nearly done!(gee... this sounds like one of them stupid TLC car shows!)
More color and detail......I will get the type apps ready after this......

 

Ta daa!..all done and ready for the printer......

I prepro all my work in Photoshop. cause its pretty much Universal.....

 

As I mentioned..... here is the shirt art as well.....
But thats another story along the riverbank.....

So..get your ass down to the Armory show and hang with the rusty nuts group.....
And for gods sake.... buy a damn poster and shirt will ya!!!!!!

HA HAHAHAHAHA HAHAH HAHA

Later......