John James Audubon Was a Superb Painter
The source material to begin working with was high quality. Despite the high contrast between the foreground and background, quick mask in Photoshop didn’t meet my standards for isolating the owls from the background. Herein comes a combination of pen tool and fine brushwork with a drawing tablet to achieve the mask that I desired.
Making Lemonade Out of Lemons
There was a lot of character in the font chosen to match the imagery, but it was far too complex even for headline text. After a lot of path erasing and smooth tool in Illustrator, the text is now legible while retaining a very distinct look.
Thinking Ahead to the Finished Piece
There was a large amount of information gathered in my research phase and the layout on the reverse side of the poster needed breaking up. I used the eventual folds on the final piece to break up the visuals and text into more digestible chunks.
Catch You on the Flip Side
With a mixture of high quality photos and clean illustrations, the reverse side of the poster is visually pleasing from a distance equally to the front side. Each image used is placed with intent to pair with the information about the owl.
Mr. Owl, How Many Licks Does It Take?
Utilizing all resources available is what helped make this poster unique. The frame was created using a tree renderer buried deep within Photoshop. The colors of the frame and the background keep the complexity of the frame muted and the focus on the painting.
