I recently did the cover for the Seattle Weekly. The Art Director had a great idea and wanted to see a few options. There wasn't a huge amount of time to deliver so I had to move fast. I took a few hours to scribble and compose a few options and then I sat down on nice sheet of paper and did tighter roughs of my ideas. I always feel that my roughs should be much tighter but given the time constraints I knew I couldn't ruminate too much and just had to commit to a few image options.
They liked the top left image. so I went straight to a final drawing. I realize now that I could have benefited from doing a tight sketch of the composition before I went to a final drawing. the more time I have to draw a face the more chance I have of getting the likeness. My first pass at the final Sketch made courtney look way to serene. So I went to work trying to give her that Rock'n Roll feel.
The benefit of using a nice 150 pound bristol paper is that you can play with a drawing for a long time. I must of worked on this for an entire day and could still try different eyes and placements.
Here is the Final Art.
