prosperity! glory! dreams cannot die.
Anyway, Of Mice And Men is a book about how the American Dream died—among other people—during the Great Depression.
Since it is such a critical look into Americana, I decided to pair it with heroic propaganda styles (particularly American) so that the style's idealism could draw attention to and reinforce the themes of the novel through their subversive relationship.
Believe it or not, I actually had very little drawing or illustration skill when I started the project; certainly not enough for detailed figure drawing. I did have a camera, though.
As such, in order to keep my deadlines, I struck some poses and painted over them in Photoshop, taking liberties upon my own form to distinguish the two characters (Lennie and George).
I also abandoned my previous idea for the back, which involved illustrations of wheat—I wasn't flexible enough to pose for it—and adapted the flag motif from the front into a full spread.
Speaking of Photoshop, all of the assets were created in it. I started by organizing each element into its own group, then subdividing each element into a few layers so as to make things easier to edit: heads, bodies, so on.
Afterwards, I blocked in base colors using a basic brush or the pen tool, then dipped into a brush pack to grab a brush that had a textured, squared-off profile that would evoke an “old painted fence” look.
Once I had my brush, I customized it further by tinkering with scatter-, color-, and shape jitter so that it had plenty of rustic imperfections.
prosperity! glory! dreams cannot die.
Anyway, Of Mice And Men is a book about how the American Dream died—among other people—during the Great Depression.
Since it is such a critical look into Americana, I decided to pair it with heroic propaganda styles (particularly American) so that the style's idealism could draw attention to and reinforce the themes of the novel through their subversive relationship.
Believe it or not, I actually had very little drawing or illustration skill when I started the project; certainly not enough for detailed figure drawing. I did have a camera, though.
As such, in order to keep my deadlines, I struck some poses and painted over them in Photoshop, taking liberties upon my own form to distinguish the two characters (Lennie and George).
I also abandoned my previous idea for the back, which involved illustrations of wheat—I wasn't flexible enough to pose for it—and adapted the flag motif from the front into a full spread.
Speaking of Photoshop, all of the assets were created in it. I started by organizing each element into its own group, then subdividing each element into a few layers so as to make things easier to edit: heads, bodies, so on.
Afterwards, I blocked in base colors using a basic brush or the pen tool, then dipped into a brush pack to grab a brush that had a textured, squared-off profile that would evoke an “old painted fence” look.
Once I had my brush, I customized it further by tinkering with scatter-, color-, and shape jitter so that it had plenty of rustic imperfections.