Illustration Friday: Swept

This week's topic is inspired by something I saw on the news. In Auburn, California, a billboard displaying a woman in a swimsuit was taken down because it was perceived as pornographic and offensive to some. The news station posted on Facebook asking if their viewers thought it was pornographic, and should it have been taken down. I found it interesting that no one really addressed the question of pornography (at least during the one time I read the post's comments), and many seemed to think that if some one has a nice looking body (the model on the billboard), then there should be no reason why they shouldn't show off what they have. If it's ok to see scantily clad people on the beach or in Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, then what's the problem?
Well, I'm not even going to attempt to address the entire issue. All I have to say is that I think there are some elements to the above examples that are probably intended to have sexual appeal. I think I'll let my illustration say the rest.

On a technical note, I decided to time myself to see how long the process would take to complete this illustration. I got the idea from one of my Facebook friends. So here it is.

This first image is a sketch of my idea. At this stage of the process, it can take as little as a few minutes to come up with an idea, or many hours. Luckily it didn't take me that long. This stage took me about 25 minutes to complete.



















From there I used a 4H pencil to outline my composition and make final decisions on what the imagery should be. I use a 4H pencil because it is difficult to reproduce on the scanner. I had to really adjust the contrast on my software in order to get these lines to show. This is about 48 minutes into the illustration process.



















Next, I added watercolor over the pencil layout. I know that many artists outline in ink before adding watercolor, but I find that this keeps my technique loose and allows for more implication rather than a total literal representation. This stage was about 1 hour and 15 minutes into the illustration process.



















Finally, India ink was added with pen and brush. I really like using a brush for inking. The brush strokes have a lot of character and it is a very quick way of laying down ink onto paper. Total time for the creative process was 2 hours and 23 minutes.