Drawings and iPads and Photoshop, oh my!

Well, it has definitely been a busy weekend... Spent most of the weekend on two different projects, one for work and another for a friend. Now that I have both done, I can finally sit down to enjoy my brand spankin' new iPad. Really looking forward to taking Sketchbook Pro for a test drive on the iPad. I'm hoping that becomes my preferred method for drawing. But enough about my iPad (for now, at least)...

One of the projects I was finishing up this weekend was a title banner for my buddy Trevor's blog Compose Myself. He had asked me to draw him something, and I came up with what I thought was a pretty cool idea. From the first ugly looking sketch on the back of a random piece of paper in his office to the final product, I think this is by far the most that I have drawn and redrawn and redrawn anything before making it to the final product, but I think it was worth it. Below are all of those drawings (except for the very first concept sketch which hopefully made its way to a garbage can)...

Here's my first real attempt to hash out what I was trying to accomplish... Pretty simple. A cartoon-ish version of Trevor with arms spread wide as though he is conducting an orchestra. Once I had that down, I started drawing. Only problem was, I ran out of room in my sketchpad for his right hand. Oops. Time to flip the page in the sketchbook and start again.

On the second attempt, for whatever reason, I apparently didn't think that a head was necessary. started way too close to the spiral of the sketchpad and once realizing this, used it as an opportunity to practice drawing the arms spread wide anyway. The second image on this page is the version that was ultimately used in making the final image, before I inked over the initial blue pencil sketch.

Inked! Now all it needs is some color. Time for a little Photoshop action. And after coloring a few things in Photoshop CS (yes, I know, I'm behind the times), I've decided that I really need to invest in CS5 when it comes out. My computer doesn't like my version of PS very much.

And here's the final version that Trevor has up on his site!

Let me know what you think of it!