Best of 2011

Thanks to everyone who voted for my best illustration of 2011. The response was greater than I anticipated and there was a clear winner with "Finding Hope in an Uncertain Economy" getting nearly half the votes ("Winter" was the runner-up). I agree that this was probably my strongest concept from 2011. But when I worked on it last summer, I was in the process of transitioning to doing most of my shading work digitally with a Wacom tablet. At the time I was very concerned with duplicating all the idiosyncracies of my traditional way of shading with oily stick media on a textured physical surface. This piece accomplishes that, but since then my technique has evolved to take more advantage of the unique opportunities that come from working digitally. In many ways, this is closer to the way I've always wanted the work to look but have been hindered by the limitations of the physical textured surface.

So I decided to go back to this piece and add more depth using the new techniques. I've always been a huge fan of Gary Kelley. I've never met him but he's been a big influence on my work, and I love the shallow "shadowbox" depth he creates in so many of his pastel illustrations. The new methods I'm using enable me to more effectively manipulate depth in a similar way. I also increased the saturation on the "hope" building to make it pop out more, and I made the textures overall a bit more subtle. What do you think of the changes? (you can see the original version here)

Thanks again to everyone who voted, I'll be entering this piece in the Communication Arts Annual Illustration Competition as promised. Wish me luck!

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Tags: Finished Illustration