Well the day is drawing near and the invitations for the wedding are out so I think it’s safe to post the final illustrations I did for my good friend’s up coming wedding in the woods.

First things first, this is the invitation image:

Cute, right?

Another idea that we all loved was the notion that the wedding should be attended by some of the forest creatures. I worked up a few woodland couples:

Don’t they look dashing?

For big design projects I like to make some small elements that can be reused over and over wherever the design might need a little picture or accent. It’s a good way to make the whole thing feel unified without making tons of custom illustrations. Even though I didn’t do the graphic design for this project (the couple did it themselves and did a fantastic job!) I wanted to give them stuff to work with, so I made up some small silhouette icons to use here and there.

Finally I ended up doing a larger version of one of my original drawings that didn’t quite fit the invitation. Instead this one ended up on the wedding website. I like the way it turned out.

Everyone asks which person is the bird and which is the squirrel.

I downloaded a trial copy of Photoshop CS5 so that I could play with some of the new painting features on my tablet. I’m still trying to find a comfortable painting technique with photoshop beyond just coloring a scanned drawing.

My biggest complaint (in any version of photoshop) is that it’s a pain to adjust the color you’re painting with. I want to paint a bit with, say, a red, and then make it a little darker or lighter the way I would on my paint palette by adding white, black, or a complementary color. If I could have the big square color picker you get when you click a paint chip out all the time that would be great, but that’s a modal dialogue and it’s inconvenient to get at. The HSB sliders help a little (RGP is worthless) but they are small and hard to adjust on the tablet.

I thought maybe I could put my color in one paint chip, black or white in the alternate, and then use the brush settings to mix the colors with pen pressure. Here’s what I got:

This kind of works, but you never get the full strength of the back color. Plus you’re limited to mixing two at a time.

CS5 also has a new mixing brush tool that works a bit like Corel Painter’s oil brush tools, just without so many settings. I had a go at those on a reference photo and came up with this:

This worked a little better. However, you get this smeary finger painting effect that looks very “computer painted”. Ick! Maybe this will work better if I find a brush I like.

Practice practice practice.