Eritrea illustration
Aug 7th, 2010 by J. O'Brien
I was happy and honored this summer to be commissioned by Brian Gray to do an illustration for Liberty Magazine. The story was about religious persecution in the country of Eritrea.
My concept sketches began with the ideas of covering, silencing, guns and then focused on confinement. Brian liked the hand-cuffed hands confined by the larger hand and suggested adding the Eritrea flag in the sleeve.
I created the initial line work for the illustration in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet and then made some additional lines work using a Pentel brush pen. I scanned in the line work and then added color and texture layers in Photoshop.
The visibility of the line work depends on its color. Some of it is the same color as one of its neighboring areas of colors, making that edge appear not to have a line separating the two color areas. And some of the line work color is different from either bordering color area so that it is visible as a line.
I was pleased with this stage of the image, and for the print version added the sleeve with the Eritrea flag. Here’s a link to the story and art online.
Brian Gray runs ProFile Stock, a rights-managed licensing site that includes an incredible cadre of illustrators.