A couple of before and after for icons that I worked on for ‘The Good Ancestor: How to think long term in a short-term world’ by Roman Krznaric, launched this week.
Showing the ideas that were sketched out after discussions and brainstorming between Roman and myself.
Always good to see how things develop and finalise at the final stage. More to come…
Following on from some of my black and white gardening illustrations here I thought I would also show some of my colour illustrations first produced for New Scientist in 1990!.
The process was very different and everything was hand drawn, or in this case hand drawn and then painted using watercolours onto watercolour paper…registration marks were placed on the paper…
…we then used an acetate overlay to draw on arrows showing water flow – specified to be 60% Cyan for the printer – plus a front view drawn in ink – to be black. The text was typed and printed from a computer and stuck on this layer using Cow Gum. Registration marks to align with the layer below…
…another layer of acetate was used to show the water flow arrows (60% Cyan) over the top of the black lines black pointers for the text…
…any other particular instructions for the printer were then included on these layers. Only then was it sent off for proofing and printing, sometimes never to be seen until the magazine arrived in the office!
Here is a very bad image (only one I could find) of the printed version from February 1990 along with a hand drawn graphic showing transport costs.
Another example here, showing the same process just as a comparison…
Things seem much easier now…or do they?
Just an excuse to show some of my old work before the daily use of a Apple Mac was involved.
I was working as a freelancer when this was done and I was involved with the gardening section of the Sunday Times at the time. It was always good to see my illustrations on the back page of the garden section. My contact and gardening expert at the time was Graham Rose.
This was taken from sketches I made of actual gardens in-situ (mostly London based) and then drawn up to scale and design on CS10 paper and Rotring pens, with lots of scraping out of ink blots!. The numbers were glued on using the wonderful Cow Gum.
inset to show some of the detail…
One more…
and again, an inset to show the detail.
More to come in #2 with watercolours, Tomatoes, overlays, CMYK markups, and a Nautilus…
I always sketch my ideas to help me to understand the subject matter, to come up with concepts and ideas for the visuals, and to be able to look back and see what my thoughts and ideas were. Here are a few from a recent commission from Scientific American, published in the November 2018 issue on the subject of gravitational lensing.
I have just ventured into the loft of our house (not been up there for ages) and discovered a couple of my old portfolios covered in dust, and so decided to have a look…it brings back many great memories.
I trained as a medical, botanical and scientific illustrator and because of my background I often talk about the importance of sketching ideas and thoughts before diving into any infographic and, I suppose, this is one of the reasons that I think this way.
but thought I should back it up with some more very early infographics and illustrations. All hand painted watercolours and pencil work and some using the trusty Rotring pens and CS10 paper.
Poster: A Guide to Lawn Weeds. Watercolour
Detail of Daisy. Watercolour
Dragonfly nymph. Pencil
Skull of toothed Whales. Rotring Pen
I may add more as I find them and if I think they are worth posting
Thanks