illofri: wings

I’m happy to have an excuse to draw these cute little owls for this week’s Illustration Friday challenge.

I drew them out first in ink, and then took a low-res photo with my phone and emailed it to myself. Then I took that into Illustrator and manipulated the Live Trace settings to get the right balance of woobly line and clarity of detail.

I made a few changes here and there (compare the digitally colored version with the scan of the original drawing below.)

I tried a few color schemes, including a brown/orange/grey one that made perfect sense, but wasn’t as interesting as the lime/cyan/yellow.

And then it seemed that the happy fellow on the top needed a reason to be so happy. So I gave him a yellow pork pie hat. He’s pretty stoked about it.

I’ve been playing with vector textures lately to get that sweet vintage look. I was thinking of maybe taking a  screenprinting class sometime this year, and this would make a great first print.

My Society6 store is up-and-running now, but so far there’s just this one print… Must bump that up on le to-do list. If you’d like to see more of my work, check out my portfolio site, or my other blog about a book about a dog.

And hey– thanks for stopping by!

angie brown | owlstack– the prequel