For nearly 20 years now I’ve been drawing using a PaperMate Flair pen. I find it kind of strange how I can get so attached, familiar, comfortable with an inanimate object. I suppose it has a lot to do with the fact that it’s so closely tied to my creative expression and passion to create?

At any given time you can find a bunch of these pens scattered through out my work area. Each one at various stages of use. Newer juicy ones to fill in bigger black areas, older ones barely bleeding ink that work well for drawing smaller details. I usually hold on to all of them until they give up the creative ghost and completely go bone dry.

I used a PaperMate Flair pen to do the majority of the creative heavy lifting on my most recent project, a poster design for Neenah Paper that I’ll be signing and giving away at the HOW Design Conference in Boston.

It’s illustrated using the same super doodle style I’ve worked in before. And this post will shed some light on how i went about creating the artwork.

As I’ve stated in previous posts, drawing is the fundamental foundation for nearly all that I do design wise. So needless to say drawing plays a large part in how I approach my creative solutions. Frankly, I don’t understand how it couldn’t? Drawing (Analog) equips and facilitates my digital projects. So even though I consider myself a digital designer, (Mac addict since Apple II days) I lean heavily on the creative discipline of drawing on virtually every project that passes through my studio.

I documented several stages in my creative process on this specific project to show how I go about creating what I like to call a “Super Doodle” illustration.

1. Composing Composition and Theme
My super doodle artwork tends to be a collage of nebulously strange elements working together to form a visual narrative that the viewer will have fun exploring, pondering, wondering, and attempting to discern it’s message using their own unique perspective.

As with most of my own personal projects I’m telling a story, but the audience gets to determine what that story is when it comes to a super doodle. I find this approach far more interactive than spelling everything out like a comic book, I want the mystery to draw people in. (Pun intended)

I usually draw out all the content at this stage with what ever I have handy be it a pencil or pen. I like to draw on separate pieces of paper and just cut them out and tape them all together until I have crude foundation that will serve as a guide for me to ink from. This stage of the process I usually do in a few days or over several weeks as I think about what I want to create.

2. PaperMate Flair Pen Inking – Analog
Using my composite mockup to guide me I begin drawing. This is the most time consuming part of this whole process. It’s a labor of love of course but I tend to break up the inking into chunks of time so I stay excited about it. Motivation has a lot of impact on drawing I’ve found. Burnt out, not very motivated and that will come through the drawing. So breaking it up into more manageable chunks of time helps me to keep the creative energy level up as I work.

When I ink I kind of do it in small strokes carefully forming my shapes rather than dragging the pen over the papers surface. This prevents the ink from bleeding and makes creating thick and thins easier I’ve found.

3. Continued Inking: Art Directing Yourself – Analog & Digital
When it was all said and done I spent around 9 hours inking this poster. Along the way of course I made a few mistakes. One morning I came in and looked at the progress and thought a few things I had drawn looked like crap, or just didn’t have the feel I wanted. One such area was the small skull popping out of the faucet. The ink was just bleeding too much to pull off the detailing I wanted at that size so I just drew a new skull larger knowing I’d just fix it in the digital end of things. And that’s why digital is so great, it’s very forgiving.

There were other small areas of detail I tweaked with in digital mode within Photoshop. Art direction isn’t just about drawing though, it’s also about knowing what to draw and what to leave out. Editing is important, paying attention to details such as negative spacing and how shapes interact all play a part in either improving a design or degrading it. So as you compare my composite image with the final you’ll see many areas that were changed and or simplified. The creative process is a progressive one, and should always be willing to change if by doing so improves the whole.

4. Digital Drawing & Coloring – Digital
When I work on a project like this in Photoshop I always work at 100%. This poster is 18 x 24 plus a .125 bleed and I created it at 350 ppi. Since it was being printed with two pantone spot colors a dark brown and dusty blue, I used CMYK mode and only built on the cyan channel (dusty blue) and black channel (dark brown) so I could separate the final art easier.

Within Photoshop I played around with textures, additional hand drawn elements, found archival images like old charts I found in a 1950′s science book, audio wave form from a favorite song etc. To colorize and detail out the whole design took me about two days and over a hundred layers.

I don’t talk about Photoshop a whole lot, but I love the app, it’s so adaptable to how ever you choose to work. Something Adobe Illustrator engineers could learn from. But I digress.

5. Final Artwork – Digital
Using analog methods in a digital age is a great way to get a unique contrast of style and aesthetic in a design. Analog drawing is always authentic, real, honest and organic in it’s final form. While digital via Photoshop allows you to enhance it with equally cool attributes make the whole visual experience come together nicely.

I’m happy with how this poster design came out. It was fun to create and I hope people enjoy it. It took a a few days to figure out a good title for it. My working title was “High Strangeness” but than I realized that some might think I was smoking Doobies while I created it, so I changed the title to “Really Weird” which seems appropriate.

Art Print Download
- FREE Really Weird Art Print • Download PDF Here.

HOW Conference Poster Signing Times
If you’ll be attending the HOW Design Conference in Boston make sure to note the date and times for the poster signings for each of the five artist below. All signing will take place at the Neenah Paper booth. I look forward to meeting those who can make it.

Poster Signing Schedule
Justin Ahrens • Saturday, June 23 / 1:00 – 2:00pm
Mikey Burton • Saturday, June 23 / 5:00 – 6:00pm
Kody Chamberlain • Sunday, June 24 / 12:00 – 1:00pm
Von Glitschka • Sunday, June 24 / 12:00 – 1:00pm
Aaron Draplin • Sunday, June 24 / 1:00 – 2:00pm

Keywords: Process, Rants, Commentary, Illustration, Drawing, PaperMate, Creativity, Doodles, Freebies

I love this time of year. The weather, the wearing of shorts 24/7, being able to use my sun roof, cool breezes and the sweet smell of freshly cut grass, family vacations, trips to the coast, and an annual design event called the HOW Design Conference.

Before social media I use to hang out in the online forums for HOW Magazine. That started around 2001 and after five years of getting to know other creatives from all over the world I attended my first HOW Design Conference held in Chicago in 2005.

The best part of the conference experience for me was just hanging out with other creatives and getting to know them. And over the past seven years through the conference and continued contact through out the year a creative rat pack has developed which makes the annual event even more meaningful with each passing year.

Plugging In
Every year since 2008 I’ve spoken at the HOW Design Conference on a variety of different topics geared for the creative community. It’s a lot of work but it’s always a blast to produce.

The weeks leading up to the conference each year find me pulling a few all nighters to prepare, coordinating various events and arrangements I tend to schedule around the conference. This year is no different.

The artwork shown above was created for Peach Pit Press as part of a give away promotion for their booth at the conference. They asked a handful of their authors to design a temporary tattoo based on the theme of their book and will be giving them away to conference attenders who visit their booth. The tattoos will be printed by Tattly.

My design of course is based on my book Vector Basic Training.

Temporary Tattoo Installed.

This year I have a lot going on in regards to the conference. In addition to the temporary tattoos above, I’ll be doing the following:

Anatomy of a Logo
A pre-conference workshop which could be summed up as a giant creative exercise covering the process of developing an identity in a fun collaborative way. My buddy Stefan Mumaw will be teaming up with me on this endeavor.

Drawing Conclusions
This presentation will showcase how drawing improves design. I’ve been interviewing all kinds of incredible creatives and researching this talk for the past several months now.

Neenah Poster Set
I’ve coordinated with the wonderful Neenah Paper and have pulled in four other extremely talented creatives, and each of us has designed a unique limited edition poster that’s being screen printed now. We’ll each do a poster signing at the Neenah Paper booth and they’ll be given away first-come first-served. I’ll be posting more about this specific event in the next week so stay tuned.

Adobe Swag Design
Adobe asked me to design their give away swag for their booth at the conference. Lets just say they came out stinking cool and I’ll be posting more about those shortly before the conference date. I’ve also arranged with Adobe to create a 1 of 1 promotional item that I’ll sign and give away with other freebies via the Adobe booth. So if you’re going to the conference make sure you visit their booth and secure your swag before they run out.

TCG Student Portfolio Review
Usually with an adult beverage in hand, a small group of us peruse the tables like a band of marauding designers, laying waste to unrealistic expectations, rip asunder weak work, shatter creative dreams, and make nervous graduates cry. OK, not really. It’s fun looking through all the books, giving advice, critiquing their work (Not always easy), encouraging them and than discovering that one jewel in the sea of marginal that gives you true hope for the next generation of creatives.

Creative Negotiating
Over the last month I’ve been in talks with several national brands and their marketing directors attempting to arrange other freebies I can give away at my presentation. T-shirts, art supplies, and software. I’m hoping to have a green light on these within the next week, so if you follow me on twitter you’ll know if and when it’s confirmed. My fingers are crossed.

Needless to say the HOW Design Conference is a blast and I’ll have fun doing everything above but I still more than anything look forward to hanging out with my friends, many of them have become close friends. We talk into the wee hours of the night, do midnight pancake runs, joke around, share our lives and I value that more than anything else. You know who you are and I look forward to seeing you all soon.

Keywords: Creativity, Commentary, Tattoos

This was a quick turn around project I did for Tennis Magazine. Not sure what issue it will appear in, but it’ll be used for both their print and digital publication.

Been working on a lot of linear styled projects over the last several months. One for a large telecommunications company, another for a mortgage company, and another for an online business etc. Once they are all in the open I’ll be posting more samples either on this blog or my primary site.

Keywords: Illustration

Here is another ’10′ ornaments in this latest bonus set. This brings the entire ever-growing bonus collection count to ’94′ above and beyond the 600+ ornaments that come with my book Flourish.Banner.Frame.

I hope you enjoy the new design motifs in this FREE download and subscribe to my blog to find out when more FREE content is posted.

Download FREE Bonus Set 17

- FREE Bonus Set 17 (Shown Above): Download Now! (Includes Ai file formats: CS2-CS5)
- Flourish.Banner.Frame Book • Available at Amazon.com: Order Here
- Flourish.Banner.Frame Book • Available via MyDesignShop.com: Order Here
- View more samples from my book and view additional bonus content here.

Previous FREE Ornament Downloads

- Bonus Set 14: Download Now! (Includes Ai file formats: CS2-CS5)
- Bonus Set 15: Download Now! (Includes Ai file formats: CS2-CS5)
- Bonus Set 16: Download Now! (Includes Ai file formats: CS2-CS5)

Keywords: Book, Ornaments, Process, Patterns

After posting a new project last week on my Glitschka Studios website I’ve been asked how I went about creating the artwork. I should point out that a full disclosure of my process can easily be found via my book Vector Basic Training or through my tutorials at IllustrationClass.com.

I’ve decided to quickly review the method to my madness in this post. It’s one that I use for nearly all my creative projects whether it’s a logo design, illustration, diagram, iconography etc.

Refined pencil sketch.

Drawing is the fundamental foundation for all that I do design wise. So needless to say drawing plays a large part in how I approach my creative projects. Frankly I don’t understand how it couldn’t? Drawing (Analog) equips and facilitates my digital projects. So even though I consider myself a digital designer I lean heavily on the creative discipline of drawing.

I’m a big believer that all designer, whether they ever want to become a full-blown illustrator should be drawing. Drawing improves design, drawing takes the ethereal and firmly places it into the practical where you can than utilize it and create from it. Such as the thumbnail sketch of my monster and than my tighter refined version shown above.

Building base vector shapes.

When you dedicate to draw out your ideas before you jump on the box and attempt to build them your drawing becomes a road map you simply follow and makes the whole process far easier than spending untold hours noodling around in search of aesthetic.

Method to my Madness
I’ve outlined my modus operandi when it comes to approaching a project. This of course is an over simplification, there are many more variables and influences depending on the project and who I’m working for but in general I do process my work through the following systematic creative process.

Working out color and detailing.

A whole book could be written about coloring (No I’m not going to write a book) but suffice it to say that it entails a large amount of experimentation. There are plenty of dumb-ass tutorials online that’ll show you how to “Create a Beachball” or some other useless thing and all though well intended most miss the point IMO.

Creativity at some levels just can’t be baked down to simple step by step processes. Exploratory work for example is just that exploratory. You take three steps forward only to discover it’s the wrong direction. That is the process, but it looks out of place in a mere step by step context. Building ideas is not the same as baking a cake, and that is where a lot of content gets the creative process wrong. A good process accepts the discovery of what won’t work as much as it does what will.

Final monster character illustration.

I strongly feel the end result of a dedicated and consistent systematic creative process will be a better designer whose work will only improve over time. It’ll also make execution easier and it helps me avoid mediocre. It’s that simple.

If you’d like to improve your vector skills as a designer or an illustrator than consider recommending my Vector Basic Training Workshop (VBT) to your local AIGA board. Or if you have another creative group locally or an in-house art department that could benefit from a workshop like this just contact me for more information.

Keywords: Process, Rants, Commentary, Illustration, VBT