Re-Zipped

So in an attempt to ease myself back into my illustration stride I thought I would do another letter piece. For whatever reason I thought that Z is for Zipper was that way to go. I also wanted the black and white version to be usable for my pen and ink portfolio.

I fell in love with one of my ideas and moved to the next stage of actually drawing it. I thought the composition was solid minus a few tangents but I (Silly me) moved forward anyway. At the color rough stage my initial problems with the piece magnified themselves and I realized that I had to go back to the drawing board. I really, really, like the idea of the zippers having the archway effect but it should have not been enough for me to blindly go forward so I could do that. I also wanted to have a zipper going through the word zipper which turned out to be a terrible choice on many levels. One it makes it so the word is hard to read and two I would either have to figure out how to draw a tiny zipper well or make the whole piece huge. Both of those options are hard task with markers. The final straw is the format. Although I don’t actually plan to make a book out of my letter art I do feel like they should share a common format. I was willing to look past this also because I like my ideas too much.

In the end this piece failed at most of its purposes. Zippers are not easy to draw but that does not really matter. The pen and ink version looks too busy and unreadable with awful tangents. The format makes it close to unusable in a portfolio. It did succeed in getting me back into the thick of things. I have realized that I need to get to the tight rough stage of my illustrations to see some of the flaws of my art. In essence making what I called a tight rough yesterday into a rough.

Ah the pains of growth. Stay tuned for the next version.