Tom Sawyer Batch #4

I hit my limit. There was simply no way to do the work I needed to get done by the deadline. So I reached out to my fellow illustrator at McGraw Hill, Max Yeager, who stepped in and finished three out of five of the illustrations in this batch. I thought he did a great job taking the reference, sketches, and some of my previous illustrations to hit the same style so the illustrations would be seamless. I still lament not being able to get to these, I ended up giving him some of my favorite compositions, but I am deeply grateful to Max for helping me hit what turned out to be an impossible deadline.

If you want further proof of how hard this was to do, let's take a look at the first image I created for this batch. It was a lot of fun, but six portraits just plain take time.

The next piece is one of my favorites of the whole project, and a great example of what I was able to do with just the few extra hours Max bought me by jumping onto the project to help.

Max worked with me to understand what my vision was for these next pieces, and I'd say he did a bang-up job of bringing these scenes to life!

The second scene Max produced was difficult, not only because of the perspective, but the lighting, too. 

Finally, Max's third piece got out in the sunlight and he was allowed to put some color in! One of the things that made his inclusion so vital was that I was able to use the time he spent creating these images for all the other batches: reference, compositions, final touches, and of course that monster image with six portraits. 

You'll be seeing his work again throughout, he ended up producing six pieces overall, but I'd like to emphasize that with these three images, Max put his other work down and helped to save me from a project that was on the verge of blowing deadlines.

Tom Sawyer Batch #3

This batch was both where I hit my stride and where the work overwhelmed me. I had juggled each batch by putting in extra work in the color phase, because the rendering phase was simply too little time. But when each batch of illustrations started to overlap, that cushion disappeared. Now, I'm trying to finish last revisions on batch #2, render batch #3, and begin sketches and planning batch #4. Not to mention how complex some of these illustrations became! Overall, I think this batch is the most inconsistent. The speed I needed to work at actually pushed me to get some nice painterly effects. I'm especially proud of Outlaw Joe's hand here.

And Tom's expression and his curled hands here.

But some of that panic actually, counterintuitively, made me hyper-focus on trouble pieces, and they end up losing energetic brush strokes. These next two turned out to be some of my least favorite images. I wish I had many more hours on them, or maybe even a do-over. But, they got finished, and that's the most important part!

You can also see that the needs of the composition and the lack of time to plan it out made for some static design. Even though the clothing and maybe even the teacher's face look nice in this image, it lacks flow and focus.

That being said, I definitely felt like my process got hammered down, and it opened up future illustrations to really shine.