From My Sketchbook to the Client

The past few weeks, I have been working on a project that is a bit different for me.  I was contacted by a woman who was part of a start up company and they were looking for an artist to create their logo and commission a second piece of art that was more of a showcase of their product. She had initially contacted the Boulder City Art Gallery and they suggested that I might be the artist for the job.  

After meeting her in person and listening to her story I decided that I would take up the challenge.  I haven't really done anything like this before but everything is a learning process and this work will undoubtedly help me with future jobs like this one.  

This logo was created almost complete with Photoshop.  I sketched out a simple outline and then scanned it.  Using Photoshop I colored it in and added the star and collar.  I even downloaded the specific font that the client wanted using the website dafont.com.  Here in my examples I purposely omitted the website information as the name of the client.    

With the logo complete I then turned my attention the artwork.  I decided that rather than trying to draw the whole scene I would be better off sketching separate elements and then putting the composition together in Photoshop.  I drew the woman, the dog, the fence and grass, the cage and the walls of the house as separate sketches in my sketchbook and then scanned each of them as a JPEG.  

There were many changes made with the first rendering after I presented it to the client.  They nixed the furniture and flowers and then completely changed the woman.  It was then that they provided me with a photo of the clients wife and asked if I could make her appear more like her.  They also asked if I could make the dog look like his boxer by giving me several photos of the dog.  This wasn't clearly discussed in our initial meeting but since I had approached this as separate drawings I could easily make adjustment.

Here is the second rendering and this one had just a few adjustments.  I got rid of the leash and ball and put the cage on the floor.  Now it was time to add the color.

I decided to print out the piece onto my usual fine art paper and with colored pencils began working my way around the 8 x 10 image.  Finally, I put both pieces into a white matte and back board to finish them off.  

Here is the finished artwork just before I turned it over to a happy client.  I learned a great deal with this job and have a better idea of the amount of time needed to work on this type of project and help me provide a more realistic quote for the next time I'm asked to do a commission job.