Limited Edition Prints by Fieldinspired
Since I was a kid I’ve always been fascinated with the beauty of the world around me - from the perfect gradient sunsets form to the complex symmetry on a seemingly simple leaf. The way nature creates beautiful design so effortlessly has always filled me with wonder. I see patterns in the faces of animals. Some are very distinct, and others are much subtler, but there are beautiful lines and shapes. With my latest collection I try to encourage people to look a little closer, see if you can’t spot beauty you hadn’t noticed before.
The Creative Process
A few years ago I saved up what little money I had and bought myself a shiny new Wacom tablet. For a couple of painful months, I attempted to use it instead of a mouse. My productivity dropped, clients complained and I eventually gave up and chucked it on eBay. For the most part, my work is created on Adobe Illustrator using a good old-fashioned mouse! Funnily enough, the mouse I use is falling apart at the seams but I’m so used to the way if feels, I can’t bring myself to find a replacement.
The hand-drawn stage tends to feature once I’m happy with the core shape of an illustration I’m working on. As incredible as Adobe Illustrator is, I find myself wanting a line to have a hand-drawn feel. I achieve this by printing off the artwork at any given stage, embellishing it using a fine-liner or a sharpie, scanning that back in and digitalizing it using the live trace tool. Often using the lines to create blends within layers, I’ll repeat this process over and over again until I’m happy with the end result.
Hundreds of layers in each piece
I begin by marking out a set of guides. One vertically in the centre of the canvas, one horizontally at the eye line, and then another two vertical guides to mark the distance between the eyes. Once those guides are set, I’ll begin working on the closest part of the animal’s face.
For example, if you were standing in front of a wolf, the closest part of the face would be tip of the nose. I start building up the artwork layer by layer; working by creating a new layer underneath the one I’ve just worked on. It’s funny - I sometimes finish a piece, look at my layers in Illustrator and chuckle to myself. Rather than the final layer sitting on top, it’s ‘Layer 1’ – it’s all topsy-turvy.
How long spent on each piece?
I’ll often set an illustration aside and come back to it later, so it’s hard to tell how long a piece has taken from start to finish. My recent illustrations have been getting increasingly detailed. The early prints, of which there aren’t many editions left now, only consisted of around 50 or so layers max. My latest illustration, Zebra, is 126 layers and took around a week I’d say. Interestingly, I’ve deleted as many pieces as I’ve released. Because of the way I work, it’s very hard to step backwards and amend part of an illustration – it’s a kind of an ‘all or nothing’ way of working.
If I reach a stage where, at the end of an evening perhaps, I look at the piece and it’s heading in the wrong direction, I’ll just delete it. Gone. Start again and learn the lessons from the previous version. I don’t necessarily recommend this approach but it works for me. Another good tip for young digital artists is to be patient. There’s a temptation to rush the final stages of an illustration – that overwhelming thirst to see the final piece finished. Take as much time with the final elements of one piece as you would with those at the beginning.
Signed and certified, limited edition prints are available from £35 at www.fieldinspired.com
Always looking to collaborate and to take on excirting commissions - so give me a shout.
Big love. Rich