Illustration of my Macaw Odin

After painting murals full time for over a decade, I took a position in Marketing. During this time, I wanted to do an Illustration and discovered the iPhone ArtStudio Lite App. I was fascinated with this Illustration tool and still am! I stayed up until the early hours trying to figure out how to illustrate using the brushes. The result was an illustration of my Macaw: Odin. It was so weird going from illustrating on big wall-sized canvases to shrinking down to a phone-screen-sized image. No ladders. No scaffolds. Just my index finger!

This Illustration couldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the layering feature. The ability to do the ‘iPhone finger-spread’ to enlarge an area so you can work close-up on the details was helpful too. The layers help you gain confidence and begin to almost “sculpt” the image. I started with the background, those green blobs are my thumb prints! The next layer was adding the branch. Working from a photo, the next layer was Odin. I used the most brush styles in this area. When I thought I was done, the branch looked pretty bare, so I added the dripping moss.

In this world of over-used stock photos, sometimes Illustrations are the perfect tool to tell your story. They’re eye-catching, draw the viewer in and depending on the style you choose, they can be full of (your own) personality. The right Illustrations used in the right way can be a strong component to your company’s branding.