Alan Ginsberg Illustration

 Hi All,

Hi everyone.  How are you doing?  Here in Phoenix things are going well.  It's summer, we did a little traveling, chilling at home, and enjoying our kids, granddaughter and pets.  I've been working hard to balance taking care of work/freelancing and at home stuff too.  I'm making fajitas for dinner tonight. 

So today I finished a piece of artwork; An illustration of Alan Ginsberg. It's a combination piece started in pencil and finished with Procreate on my iPad.

Ginsberg - pencil and digital media by Tom Kreienbrink

Recently, my wife, (Sue) and I spent a week in San Francisco.  She was there for work, so I had the week to kind of, immerse myself in some of the culture, the city and some of the historical neighborhoods.  One of the places I visited was the North Beach neighborhood.  This neighborhood was famous for the being the center of the Beat movement, back in the 50s and early 60s.  This movement included poets, writers, artists and also great jazz clubs and some of the greatest jazz musicians of the past.  I visited the Beat museum, the famous City Lights Book store and walked the neighborhood.  Somewhere in this visit I was inspired to do an illustration of one of the main characters from this movement and neighborhood; the poet Alan Ginsberg.

The illustration is a realistic, editorial style piece of artwork.  I'm continuing to update my portfolio and my main style that I'm working in right now is a pencil illustration style that I produce with pencil and paper, and am finishing with the Procreate app on my iPad.

I start out defining the image - getting the image on paper, filling in details, and shading the different areas of this picture.  Of course, during this process I'm tightening up the details; trying to get a nice tight illustration.  I work with harder and then softer pencils to get the varied tonal values as well.

When I get to a certain point where I feel like going to the iPad, I snap a picture with the iPad and open it in the Procreate application.  I have the Apple Pencil that I work with.  It really gives the feel and control that I need to work on this platform - like working with a real pencil.  

I have a lot of tools in Procreate that give me the flexibility and control to get the effects I'm trying to get.  I use a lot of the pencil and pen tools to keep a consistent look and feel.  With the app I can get those black areas really dark.  I can also use pencil tools to get light to dark shading and still keep the pencil technique going on on this piece.  As the artwork is primarily monochromatic, I wanted to use a little hint of color on the hat and his scarf.  It felt like the right accent.

Finally, when I was happy with the image - the loose pencil work in the jacket, and tighter technique in the face, black hair and beard, etc...then I did a little background to finish it off.  I think it would stand alone without the background, but I feel good about it as is.

As I'm working to build up my portfolio and freelance illustration business, I'll be blogging more.  

I hope you all have a great rest of your summer and remember - there's a lot of folks out there that are hurting right now.  People are stressed for a variety of reasons....try to have some compassion and spread some kindness everywhere you go.  It may be at work, your neighborhood, or the grocery store...anywhere.   You can make a huge difference with just a smile or a kind word in these trying times...

Peace and Love,

Tom

Tom Kreienbrink

Freelance Illustrator and Graphic Designer

Portfolio: www.behance.net/tk-art

email: tom.kbrink@gmail.com