Process Post: Skyace Wasteland and Thank you Plus Secret Event

Thank you everyone for supporting us at the Center for the Book's Holiday Craft Fair. It was cold and rainy, but still a fair good showing. Monkey sold some ties and met some awesome people while Seal was madly working on some tight deadlines for the painting below.

MonkeyandSeal are cooking up a soon-to-be announced secret event so please be on the lookout and keep your March open! Thank you.

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Seal's Process: Part II of the Tyger Tyger paintings

This illustration was painted in acrylics. I had in mind an old rundown power plant wasteland with a wooden railroad going through the mountain passage. I wanted to get the feel of "after a rain" so I tried to paint cool lighting without any direct sunshine. Below is the in-progress step-by-step painting process.


The relatively finished piece above. The thumbnail below. In the thumbnail, I mainly wanted to design the shapes and rhythm of the piece before any details. The plane wings point downward, with the vertical power plant columns on the right holding the main mass of the painting, and the railroad points upwards back towards the plane.
So below is my initial setup. I have my thumbnail on the corner of my in progress painting. A book of clouds above so I can reference color and shape. Each different storm cloud have different shapes. I still struggle with painting clouds, but they're fun.
I generally try to paint from background to foreground, meaning sky, ground, then whatever is in front. I do the biggest shapes first, the plane being the smallest is last. Although I broke my own rule by painting the hazmat sign first before the shape on the left. It was just too tempting. I like how old signs have rust color and peeling paint job. I actually lost the original shape of the mountain behind the powerplant. Something I am still trying to fix. Thank you for visiting!

Process: Seal's 90 thumbnails

Here is a sneak peek at Seal's current illustration and brief process: Seal was inspired and repulsed by the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. It was the worst nuclear reactor incident that resulted in a massive explosion and severe radioactive pollution that is still affecting the area today. She is working with images of powerplants and her young female protagonist who is an adventurous survivor learning to navigate through a new world. Below is the initial color layout.


90 thumbnails. Seal really likes working on thumbnails. They are small, quick, expressive, and are not committed to any sequential order, specific story, or a uniform style. She worked on these small compositions in the course of two days during her lunch breaks at work and at night. They range from 1min. to 10min. thumbnails. Most of the time, Seal doesn't have a concrete idea to begin with. She just knew that lately, she was inspired by Russian architecture, Victorian metropolis, and steampunk.

In her thumbnails, she quickly indicated 3 value range and three depths of field: foreground, middleground, and background. She is also fascinated by the interplay of light.

Below are some of her favorites. The color rough is based on the fourth thumbnail. Please check back soon for the finished illustration.