I understand how from the outside it looks like I’ve been slacking off. There’s been no new videos on my channel, blog posts have been minimal, and I haven’t even been showing off a lot of new art. I have however been creating new art. For clients. I’ve been staying busy enough with freelance jobs that I can remove everything else from the “You’re not being productive enough” part of my brain which haunts me whenever I try to relax.
Recently I was asked to do a series of girls getting their skirts blown up. The client who contacted me about this told me about how back in the day at the carnival, just outside of the funhouse exit, there was a grate on the floor that would shoot up air to blow the skirts of the ladies. And it was outside this exit men would gather to bare witness. What he was asking for were a series of three drawings to commemorate this memory from his youth. These always turn out to be my most favorite jobs to dive into.
I have a folder I keep off to the side filled with people and things I hope to use for a drawing in some way or another. A majority of the images are of girls and other people I find beautiful or interesting. And several of these were referenced for this particular project, including Betty Page, Traci Lords from Crybaby, and Playboy’s Annie Fanny, which is probably the easiest to spot in these. And I knew they’d each make adorable Petty Girl style pieces.
I always begin with a sketch. And in this case I sketched all three ladies before bringing them to Illustrator for digitization. Then I trace the sketches in black and white. After the basics are complete I bring them onto the same page to unify them. Make sure they’re similar enough to be a set, but different enough to compliment each other. And then I start the search for a color scheme. In this case a Red, White & Blue theme worked perfectly for redhead, blond & black hair.
At each step along the way I make sure the client is happy with the way things are going, and I always leave room for revisions, tweaks and even a complete redraw at times. Then the final step in these was to make that funhouse exit background that would bring them all together.
I’m telling all of you this for two reasons. One is because I’m really proud of how these turned out and wanted to show them off. And the other, I love being hired for jobs like this, and for anyone who does hire me, this is how a job gets done.
