So I took a much needed pause from my blog to focus on work and personal stuff. BUT… I’m back with a vegance. Before I start posting anything I need to thank the people at Phoenix Design Week for chosing me as a featured designer, and Santy for hosting an awesome gallery showing. That place is incredible, I felt honored just stepping foot in the building after looking at all of their Addy awards.

Now it’s all said and done I want to post up a couple photos to recap the event and to thank everyone for coming out AND…… give away some free posters. It was awesome to have friends, family and fellow designers coming out to support me, as well as meeting A BUNCH of new people. Thank you all for taking an interest in my work and taking the time to support me, I love you!

Here are some images from the Santy Gallery, and the poster giveaway is at the bottom of the post.

Poster Giveaway!

There have been people that enjoy my artwork and style, and then there are those that really connect with certain pieces. I’ve spoken to a couple people at the gallery and through e-mail that have been taken back by some of the pieces or that have really connected with one of the quotes I’ve chosen. MSCED was created as an extremely personal project for me to focus on love in my own life and increase my creativity at the same time. All of the quotes chosen are extremely close to my heart and the artwork was created to reflect the quotes.

So, with that being said, I’m giving away my prints from the gallery showing. How do you get a print? Simple, email me why the piece speaks to you, why you want it, why you deserve it more than someone else. The poster will go to the person that appreciates it the best. I’ll even pay for shipping, all you have to do is hang it in your house and freaking love it. I will be putting certain MSCED posters up for sale, these however will not be for sale. Only I and the people selected will own these prints. So… get to typing. Email me at hello(at)dunlapstudios.com, and poor your heart out!

Hey guys, I wanted to do a more in depth post about the gallery exhibition tomorrow. I will be exhibiting at Santy Wed-Fri from 11-6pm, but the reception/wicked awesome get together is tomorrow, Wednesday at 7pm. I’ve been featured in a couple exhibits across the US since I’ve started Dunlap Studios, but this is my first actual exhibit. It’s also huge for me because the work is extremely personal.

The gallery is featuring 5 prints from my Make Something Cool Every Day series. For those of you that don’t know, MSCED was a project I did a couple months back. I created a piece of art every day for 14 days that reflected the feelings and events of each day. Most of them feature music lyrics or quotes from books, but all of them feature me as an artist and as a person, and they are extremely personal. The project was created to help me handle the stresses of life and focus on the positive aspects. The project was a focus on love and what it can do, most of them are meant to be inspiring for me but some are just reflective of the situations that I was dealing with.  I couldn’t have a more personal series to exhibit, so I’m honored and WAY nervous to be a part of it. To learn more about MSCED click here.

With all of that being said, come out and check out the exhibit. I will be there at 7 happy to meet and talk to everyone about the project, me or whatever. I also have miniature limited edition prints of one of my most popular prints for anyone that wants one (or until they’re gone). I will also be showcasing my personal portfolio that was just finished and printed this past week along with the rest of my print collateral, both Dunlap Studios and MSCED. Whether you’re a friend or just frequent the site, come out and have a good time, everyone is welcome and your support is much appreciated!

Along with MSCED, Santy will also be showcasing three other incredible artists: Jon Ashcroft, Daniel Davis and Jeremy Smith (whom if you’re a type nut, you’ll love his exhibit). Along with the personal exhibits, there will also be an exhibit of the PHXDW Poster contest and a showcase of fantastic rejected logo designs, I’m featured in both of these as well.

Santy Integrated

6710 E Camelback Rd Scottsdale, AZ 85251

Wednesday 7pm-9pm

Hey guys, I’ve got some big news. I will be featured in Phoenix Design Week at Santy Integrated. The exhibit will showcase pieces from my MSCED series, as well as several other artists and series. So please come out and support me, and Phoenix Design Week. If you’re a friend or just and internet friend, come shake hands and see some of my stuff up close. I’ll also have a print out sheet of all of the MSCED posters I’ve done, I’ll will be printing them as limited edition prints upon request. Also there may be a little something something in it for you as well.

For more information check out the Phoenix Design Week website to find gallery dates and times, as well as the artists/exhibits listed. Hope to see you there!

Hey guys, here’s a poster I did for Phoenix Design Week. It’s actually in a competition to be the poster that’s mass printed to advertise and promote the Phoenix Design Week. Check it out after the jump, and please vote for it here.Click on image to view full size.

Vote Now!

Hey guys, loonnnng time no post. I’m pretty sure every post for the past couple months has began with that. Luckily I have some pretty cool posts in the works to make up for it. This tutorial is for an illustration piece that I did for Origivation Magazine. It’s an indie/alternative magazine showcasing some of the top underground bands.

This illustration is for the band, Breathe Carolina, an extremely unique electronica/pop/hardcore/mind-melt that is making waves with their upcoming third release. So, grab your hat, or socks or whatever and hold on because this one’s a long one.

The Project:

A unique 8.5”x11” editorial illustration using an image of the band. I had free creative reign over the project, as long as it was unique. Did I mention it had to be unique? Oh yeah… also, the magazine had to go to press in four days and I of course did a day of brainstorming (playing Warhawk).

So with that being said, let’s begin.

Step 1: Prepping for Sketching

Open a new document at 8.5”x11”, drop the photo in and free transform it into position.

Next, lower the opacity down to the mid-20’s so you can still view the image but your sketch will be prominent.

Step 2: Sketch That Sucka

Everyone has their own style for sketching in Photoshop. Normally my sketches would require a Wacom, but this one could be done using a mouse. I don’t want the sketch to be very prominent in the final result, I want it to just be one of the many things to look at, so a mouse will do just fine.
I use the same brush for almost all of my illustration projects, it’s called “Oil Heavy Flow Small Tip” located in the Wet Media Brushes library. And, it looks like this:

Create a group for your illustration layers so you’ll be able to duplicate them as a set later. Then create your first illustration layer. This will be the outline layer, you’ll want to use a thicker brush and longer strokes. It’s ok to be a little messy with it, it will add personality later on.

Here’s my finished first layer:

The more shading the better, but you don’t want it to be overpowering in the end.

Next, create a second illustration layer, and lower your brush size down. This is for fine details, such as the lighter shading and the texture of the hair.

Once you’re happy with that layer, duplicate it to bring out the detail.

Step 3: Create Your Background

For the background I used the old book texture pack from BittBox, as well as the old film textures from Lost And Taken.

Shut off your illustration layers and drop your chosen texture into your document. Use Free Transform to position it where needed.

Once you have it the way you want it, duplicate it. Now, for an awesome trick my buddy Justin showed me. This doesn’t work on all of the book textures, but it’s a really nice addition to your design when it works. Go to Image->Adjustments->Levels, and once the dialogue box pops up click the “Auto” button. You want to go through the Image menu because you don’t want a Levels layer, you just want to apply the effect to the current layer. Also, if you’re using CS3 or older, you can just go to Image->Adjustments->Auto Levels and it will do the same thing.

As I said, this trick doesn’t work for all textures but it has an awesome effect on some. I constantly just drop textures in to see what Auto Levels will make of it.

Now, change the blending mode to Multiply and drop the opacity down to 90%.

Now you’ve got a unique mixture of the two.

Step 4: Illustration Background

When I was coming up with the idea for this piece I wanted to make it look like the illustration was coming out of the background, literally bursting out. I came up with the idea of doing a separate background style in the middle of the current one, and giving it personality with some BittBox brushes.

I chose the Spraypaint Brush Pack from BittBox to form the body of the illustration background. It doesn’t matter what color you use to paint this in, the shape is all you’re looking for. Start painting in the areas around the subject matter, the messier the better.

Once I have the base of it painted in, I start dropping in the old film textures from Lost And Taken.

Once I drop in the texture I select the shape of the spraypaint layer and apply it as a layer mask on the texture.

Keep adding texture after texture and keep applying the same layer mask. Once you have them in the document, play around with the blending modes and opacity until you’re happy with the final result. My favorite blending modes for this texture pack are Multiply and Overlay, the overlay creates an eerie subtle blue tone, you can make it even more subtle with your opacity. Here’s what I came up with:

Step 5: Integrate the Illustration

Once we have our background complete, now we’ve got to focus on the foreground.

Turn your illustration layer back on. As you see, your illustration is breaking out of the bounding box we created for it, a little will add personality, a lot will make it look amateur.

To fix this I added a layer mask to my illustration group and used a gradient to fade in the bottom of the illustration. You can see the result below.

Once I have the illustration faded the way I want, I duplicate the layer set and make it pop out a bit more.

Step 6: Time To Paint

Turn your original image back on, it will be our paint. The image was a web image, so it wasn’t good enough quality to be sent for print, especially in a magazine. But, I’ve got a little trick that won’t make it even matter.

First, duplicate your image layer. Go to Filter->Other->High Pass, it should already be set to 10 in the dialogue box, then switch the blending mode to Overlay. Next, go to the image below it and go to Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur and blur the photo enough to hide the pixilation, but not enough to get rid of all the detail and color.

Your end result will be a kind of HDR look.

Once you’re happy with your photo effects, drop the photo layers into a group folder and apply the spray paint layer mask.

Now create another group folder inside that group and drop your images into it. Add a new layer mask to this group and fill it with black so the images aren’t visible. Now choose a couple brushes and start painting in the photo.

I was using the BittBox Splatter Pack and Dunlap Studios Splatter Pack 1, both of which are near 2500px for every brush, perfect for large print and perfect for this piece. Here is what I came up with.

I then duplicated that group and messed with some blending modes to pop the color out a bit more and more. Mess around with it until you find what you like, I found the Color Burn blending mode above the High Pass layer worked really well. I also painted brush strokes into different layer masks so their were faint differences. Here is my final result:

Step 7: Handle Your Scandal

Now that you’ve got all the steps done, just put it together. Turn on all the needed layers and see what it looks like.

Detail:

In The End

I had a blast working on this, it’s always fun to have a project that gives you free artistic reign. I’m really happy with the end result and I’m honored to have been asked to do this by Origivation. If Breathe Carolina makes it on to this site, I hope you liked it and I’d love to do more stuff for you, just hit me up.

On another note…. there’s another post to come, so hang in there!

I was featured yesterday in a contest over at Abduzeedo. I saw that there was a contest for desktop wallpapers, and because of my new love of creating wallpapers and posters, I decided to submit one. This, along with many others, will be featured at Indie Web Studio for download, as well as printed in short runs for limited edition prints. So download this one and let me know what you think, and make sure to check out Abduzeedo to see the other entries.

download

Contests are great not only to get your work seen, but to also see other designers work. Here are some of my favorite from the post. Check out all 99 at the Abduzeedo posting.

I’m going to be featured in the May/June issue of Layers Magazine, participating in the ‘Design Makeover’ section along with two other designers. Keep an eye out for it and I’ll post up images of the actual magazine as soon as I receive it.

Welcome, one and all to the new Dunlap Studios!

The site has undergone several huge changes, and all of them for the better. I’ve designed the site myself and had it coded and installed by Vince over at Mynameisvince.com (who did a fantastic job, by the way). I designed the site to match Dunlap Studio’s personality, style and uniqueness, as well as showcase my work and projects. If you are new to Dunlap Studios I ask that you take a look around. Check out my portfolio and my about me page to learn what I’m all about.

My old blog can still be accessed here if any of you are interested. I was planning on plugging all of my old Blogspot posts into the new blog, but I’ve decided against it. I want this blog to play a different, more specific role. My goal is to make this a resource for fellow freelancers, designers and illustrators, where they can find tutorials, tips and yes…. of course, some freebies. I also want this to be a source of inspiration and ideas for my current and future customers. I will be posting new and current projects all of the time, both professional and personal, just so you can see what I’m working on. I’m hoping it’ll give you some ideas for future work, or just give you an idea of what I can do for you.

In the next coming weeks I’ll be starting several series of posts related to design to do’s and not to do’s, as well as a couple freebies. I will also be starting a weekly posting called “Friday Finds”, where I will post my weekly web findings.

Until then, check out the my interview with JustCreativeDesign.com in his weekly feature: Designer in the spotlight.

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