A pencil is done, working at the same size as the printed piece. I usually work a little larger than the printed piece, but this illustration is fairly large and will generally be viewed from a distance. The pencil is accurately drawn but minimal shading is used. It needs just enough detail to get client approval and to serve as a road map when doing the final illustration.

The pencil is faxed to the client, and after a few revisions, I get approval to go to finish.

The scratchboard illustration is done in pieces (the bread, stand of wheat, landscape and border) and put together in PhotoShop. I did a pencil of each of the parts on tracing paper and taped them together for the final pencil. When doing final illustrations, take the tracings apart and transfer them to separate pieces of scratchboard.

TRICK:
When doing line art that will be scanned, especially when scanning several pieces that will be put together, put a horizontal line on the art and be sure the line is horizontal in the scan. Avoid rotating the scanned image with image editing software (PhotoShop), this will result in a loss of quality in the image.

Scratchboard Illustration by Michael Halbert
PHONE 636-349-1145 EMAIL michael@inkart.com
Copyright © Michael Halbert 2000