Texas Monthly – Katrina

Recently I finished up this feature comic for Texas Monthly.

Here are the two versions. The first is my original take, the 2nd is a brighter version a the request of the Art Director, who wanted it more colorful.

Original version:

Revised version:

Though I think both versions look good, I’m partial to the first, which has a more serious tone about it.

I’m proud of both versions but I felt like the desaturated version challenged me more as an artist; I was working with a different color scheme than I’ve ever tried, and much less saturation.

One of my favorite parts of these pieces was the interior shot of the airplane. I have never really felt comfortable doing large environments (though I don’t shy away from them), but on this one it really seemed to come together.

The challenging part was working with value patterns to lead the eye to the focal point. You can see from the example above I tried to put the main figures near the areas of most contrast in the chairs, as well as giving their faces more readable silhouettes than other figures in the piece.

When I went in to color it, I pushed the most saturated parts to the edges of the panel to get the viewer to look at those other parts of the panel, and to balance out the colors for both the page on its own and the spread as a whole.

Thanks for reading,

f.
p.s. on a side note, some people left comments on the previous week’s entry that were never published, or were delayed by several days. I don’t know what the issue is, but they appear to be working normally this week.