THE WRITING ON THE TREE...

I'm hitting you with two pages of the week this week since it slipped my mind to post last week. This is a good week for it since we start with July and end with August.

For this first posting, I wanted to do something a little more tutorial-like. I do all my work in traditional mediums and only use computers for color separating T-shirt and poster designs. But the computer is used to lay in all the type for my books (which all of you probably know already). But in this case, I hand lettered some type so that it would look more organic and humanistic.

There is a scene at the end of the book where Victor Frankenstein is hunting down his creation. This wretched abomination destroyed everyone he's ever loved, and has pushed Victor to a mortal vendetta. He follows the monster across countries, through Russia and the desserts of the Sahara, up through the uncharted ices of the north. Victor follows close behind and can usually track him through over sized footprints and destruction. But at times, the wretch would leave a message on a rock or a tree just to make sure his pursuer doesn't give up.

One message is left carved into a tree. First of all, on a stylistic side, I wanted this tree to represent life. This is before Victor reaches the icy north, and there is still beauty surrounding him. The tree is full of life, erupting from a grassy hill and sprouting flowers itself. Not only does the wretch scar this tree with his selfish message, but Victor too, with disregard for life, sets the tree on fire in a vengeful tantrum.

The message inscribed by the wretch needs to look like bark scraped from the bark. Often times, a font will be too unified and repetitious. So I hand drew the letters myself. To do this, I finished the piece of art first. then I laid a piece of tracing paper over the art and drew the inscription onto the tracing paper over "the tree". Next step, I laid the tracing paper over illustration board and transferred this same writing onto the board using carbon paper. Then, I inked this transfer. The inked version of the inscription was scanned into the computer and laid over the artwork in the computer, using a choice of color that I felt represented fresh wood. After adding a shadow, it looks pretty good.

This version is just a mock up. The digital steps will be repeated by the designer once they get the original artwork from me. From there, she can continue to tweak it to perfection.