Illustration Archives - John Moorehead

Illustration

Doodle mugs, and a new store

I've been experimenting with making products lately. Here's a couple of mugs I made. These are available in the store. I have had a number of ideas for posters and apparel and have been working on turning some of these into products.

Creating the products has been more difficult than setting up the store. It's pretty hassle-free to set up a payment gateway these days, especially if you use Wordpress. If you're an illustrator or artist who wants some help setting up a shop online send me an email or a message on twitter.

Creative Sprint project

I'm part of the Creative Sprint project, where I'll be making illustrations of locations in Pittsburgh. I'll update this post each day in April.

Larger versions are on instagram.
Here's the whole set: pittsburgh-creative-sprint

Here they are separately: I’m part of the Creative Sprint project, where I’ll be making illustrations of locations in Pittsburgh. I’ll update this post each day in April. Larger versions are on instagram. Here’s the whole set: Here they are separately:

Houdini

I'm working on this illustration but I turned it into a coloring page for Houdini's birthday today. Click to download the larger image.

Slainte part 2

I have everything brought into Illustrator, now I'm working on detail and colors. You can see in the letters that there are breaks to help me see where there will be depth in the letters.

I'm interested in adding detail inside of the letters, bringing in knots or a pattern if it will support the look of everything together.

Below you can see what the "e" looks like with depth and shading added as the letters overlap.

I won't be using these too much here, but here is a quick way to make three easy art brushes in a short amount if time. They're good for detail or backgrounds, and helped me to learn how art brushes work in Illustrator.

Slainte part 1

Here's an in-progress view for a St. Patrick's Day illustration I'm making this year. Inset below is the basic thumbnail I began from and the first larger sized plan I put together for the next set. I definitely wanted to keep the diagonal direction in there but wasn't sure yet how to handle the lettering. There were a lot of ways to go with the type.

In the next version I have more of a plan for the composition and the diagonal the lettering is resting on. I have a couple of things left to puzzle out but I'm far enough along to bring it into the computer to process and adjust.

Since this is so complicated I will think about using limited colors and sticking with richer shades of green, red, gold, and brown. In ornate illustrations - like in illuminated manuscripts - I notice that some level of order helps to balance organic elements. I think the same idea can help here.