It's All About The Details

Myth, Lore and Legend Coloring Book Cover

Maybe it's because I wanted to start things right. Maybe I wanted to put out my own Adult coloring book with the right treatment.  Maybe I'm just nervous at coming out with my own.

The truth is, going into detail has led me to nitpicking my work. My illustrations are influenced, however thinly, by old woodcuts and I wanted to capture that for this publication and with my other work currently in development.

Things like preparations for printing, making sure the black is actually 100% black so that it will come out with all the thick lines and the thinnest line with the same tone and not having a faded apperance of a photograph. These things you get to understand once you dig in and listen to someone who knows. 

Bleeds and mark points.

CMYK and RGB.

Two color and four color.

"Plantsa" and negatives.

Color Separation.

All printing stuff most artist tend to ignore and be full of ourselves once we finish our masterpieces, we can't be bothered with the other details.

And I need to know these things. It may help me in how I execute new works that would be effective in print.

It's all about the details.

Prepping Illustrations for Coloring Book

It may not look like it, but preparing an illustration for printing takes a lot of detailing and digital processing. Most artists would just draw or illustrate and leave all the proper treatment to their artwork to the color separation crew and the printers.

Which is why I am taking the reigns with this project. I have a fascination with woodcut and would really like to capture that grittiness with my drawings. But that isn't always the case. Because some drawings tend to have clean lines while others need some more attention.

Nymph

Also, for better, more professional output, I use both Ps and Ai to finalize each drawing. The patterns and embellishment I can now create at will and replicate these for my own.  And thanks to these wonderful tools, I resurrected some old artwork and gave them  new life. But the details, like I mentioned before, takes more of the processing. Most people would just have their artwork scanned and submitted, never taking into consideration what could be learned by knowing what the printing would require. Good to know I have friends who can assist me in these aspects of production. Stuff like making sure the lines are black and not 90% black, or choosing the right paper for the pages themselves and for the cover, and which materials would be cost effective while retaining the quality of the artwork.

And I have just finished processing all illustrations for my Myth, Lore and Legend Coloring Book for GrownUps . The image shown above is one of my new creations.

And I have more on the drawing table so tyhat vol.2 will not be far behind.