Not sure if that’s exactly what Seth chose for the topic, but that’s the direction I was going! I decided to go with one of the bigger musical influences of my childhood: the Voice…the incomparable Roy Orbison! This was taken from the album cover art for his triumphant comeback “MYSTERY GIRL.” For most people growing up it was the Beatles, Stones or Elvis…but in our house Orbison resonated the years of my childhood. The most amazing thing about it, no matter what age, what time period, his stuff holds up remarkably well!
This is part one of a 3-4 part process. This is the raw inks over my pencils. The next step is to clean it up a bit and add gray tones. And last, I’m going to add some white acrylic splatter to give it some atmosphere. I’ll post each piece as they’re complete. Hope you like it…now, go listen to some Orbison! 
step 1
step 1.5
I scanned in the drawing at 300 dpi and took it into Photoshop (CS2). I then proceeded to bump the contrast levels up to get a darker, more solid black. After that I went in and removed the areas I didn’t like. Specifically the hands/wrists. I tend to do a bit of contour drawing when I do hands and in this instance it wasn’t a good thing. I want the drawing to balance out, and the simplicity of the face was being overwhelmed by the rendering of the hands & writs. I’ll print this out and draw in the fixes over the weekend. (stay tuned!)
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Well after tweaking the brightness/contrast in photoshop it came to me that I was a few steps ahead of myself. It wouldn’t looks right to go back in on a high contrast piece, so I went back to the original and cut out what I wanted to redraw and left the contrast alone.
step 1.75
I reduced it a bit to fit an 8-1/2″ x 11 sheet and printed it out. I then went back in with a 4H pencil and drew the corrections. I used the same tools to ink these changes (Prismacolor pens, faber-castell big brush pen, prismacolor cool grey art markers) I then added a gradient behind his right hand.
step 2.0
I’m still unhappy with the right hand, so instead of adding in the white acrylic splatter I’ve decided to redraw the right hand first. Once I have it the way I want it I’ll assemble it in photoshop, print it out and add the splatter…stay tuned!
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Getting close! This is the scan from where I redrew his right hand. I finally got it to where I don’t hate it, so I decided to scan it and move on to the next step. These steps are taking anywhere from 10-30 minutes each, usually done over lunch. If not for this process blog I would have stopped or trashed it after the first step, but this has been pretty fun!
step 2.5
I’m going to print this one out and do a few touch ups. I may even re-do the gradient behind him just so that it’s crisper. All the scanning & printing have degraded it down quite a bit. Then after that, it’s on to the white acrylic splatter!
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Sketchercise – Music related art: Roy Orbison – part 4
Took a week to get through all the steps, scanning and posts, but here it is! I haven’t worked like this in awhile. I used to use Photoshop a lot more than I do now,
but I find that the drawings lose some of their life and personality when manipulated digitally. Besides, whatever commission I’ve gotten havre called for the entire
process to be done on one sheet, so I didn’t have the luxury of using Photoshop to help make up for my many imperfections!
I did some light touch ups around the hands and on his hair. I then added the gradient in two steps using all of the markers I have 10% – 90%. Not quite as good as I’d hoped or practiced, but I gotta
keep moving! I also added some greys to his glasses to help build the contrats for the piece (30% & 50% cool greys). I actually liked how that turned out!
step 3.0
I scanned it in this morning at 400 dpi and tweaked the brightness/contrast ever so slightly so as to not disprupt the gradients. I then went in with a burn tool and darkened everything up equally. I trimmed the edges arond the piece and there you have it!
step 3.5 – the final!
For the few who actually stayed with me or this I really appreciate it and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!
See you next time!
Tags: music, process, Roy Orbison, sketchercise