My Illustration Workshop!

This past weekend I finally conducted my “Caricature Illustration Workshop” here in Minnesota. Originally scheduled for March 27-29 with 15 students, the pandemic caused me to reschedule to Aug 14-16th, and we ended up with only 6 people in the class.

This was a different sort of workshop for me. We did a mock illustration project from start to finish, and I taught the class about narrative and problem solving, working within the limitations imposed by the job, composition, and the process from rough concept sketches through to final art. I also taught traditional dip pen/brush inking, and both my digital coloring and traditional watercolor techniques.

We started out with a Friday night cookout at my place and tour of my studio, then a lecture on the illustration process. I gave everyone the “assignment” at that time, and sent them home with some homework… come to the class the next morning with some ideas for their illustration.

The job was a half page illustration for a magazine story about how so many old actors are still playing the actions hero characters they were famous for when young. The students had to come up with an image to tell that story. I included a page layout that the class had to work with, designing an illustration and composition that worked within the space.

We all worked on the same project, but each artist “pitched” their different ideas using rough concept sketches, with me picking one of them for each student. Then we moved on to rough sketches. At each stage we’d do a class critique where I would provide art direction. Here’s my rough sketch for the project:

We moved on from there to final pencils, and then to inks. I did a lesson on inking both with dip pen and brush, and did the inks on my piece while also walking around and working with each artist on their inks.

I sent everyone home that night with the task of bringing in finished inked art on Sunday morning.

On the last day we did the final art, and each artist did either digital or traditional color. For those doing digital color, I scanned their inks and prepped their art for digital painting. I showed my digital coloring techniques, and worked on my piece digitally for a while:

I didn’t finish the digital version, because I spent most of the day doing the watercolor version. I showed the class my watercolor technique, and then painted my piece while also stopping and walking around offering instruction and critiques. The final painting is at the top of this post.

The last hour or so the entire class spent reviewing each artist’s final work, with my offering a final critique. Here’s my watercolor version in the laout:

The class went really well. It was fun, and everyone ended up with a nice piece at the end. I’ll definitely do this again sometime. My thanks to the students who stuck with class through the pandemic rescheduling and the social distancing protocols we had to observe in order to do it.