La pieces de la final

For my final images I decided on the three strongest ones from my mock ups on Illustrator. Although originally I wanted my illustrations to be of women only, I really liked the image of the older couple together and really liked the way the image worked with it's quote "Everything has beauty but not everyone sees it".

As well as this I thought the age of the couple as well as the love between them made the quote more meaningful, for the project as a whole and for a beautiful illustration.

The other two images that I chose were down to the quality of the tattoos on the digital edits. I really liked all of the faces and layouts of the the other illustrations but I felt the front facing two women had a better quality of line on their tattoos, as well as showing more covering in terms of tattoos as well, which I think speaks better to the audience and to the quotes that they are working with.

Once I made my decision I printed out the images of the black illustrations and the backgrounds out on to high quality cartridge paper. I wanted to use that because I think it felt best because I could use fine liner pens for un-interrupted detail as well as using watercolour and ink washes too. I used a thicker paper so I knew that it would stand  the wear or multiple layers and washes.

After this I pencil sketched out half of outlines for where I wanted the banners holding the quotes as well as the motifs. For the motifs especially I referred back to my initial research images of people with tattoos and what they had to give me some similar styled images to used of the same era for decoration on the illustrations.

 Using tracing paper I then mirror flipped all of the decoration over to give balance and a humanly touch to the reflections - it may not be perfect the the exact degree and line but I think it adds more charm but having a balance with a feel of a innocent imperfections - nothing's perfect and I don't want these Illustrations to be completely regimented and forced.

Once all of this was done, I refereed back to my colour swatches and pallets and watercoloured basic block

colours on to the images. After this I then did a thin ink wash on some of the colours so create unity on depth of colours throughout the pieces. After this, to create a slight difference of shade where needed, using Pro Marker pens I then coloured in certain areas to bring out certain bits and keep everything neat. Finally, using fine liner pens, I added in outlines, details and the hand written text.

I have to admit, I actually am really pleased with the final images and how they turned out. I plan to spray mount them onto mount board and then display them like this for show - I do not plan on using frames as I feel it will take away from the charm.