A Band of Louies

I love drawing music. Specifically bands. There's a lot of opportunity to capture visual rhythm and I think the subject matter has mass appeal. My friend Louie commissioned a piece featuring several of Disney's Louies and the idea really lent itself well to putting all of these characters into a band.

My preliminary studies really focused on the shapes of things. I wasn't too concerned with being "on model". I really wanted to create pieces that fit together like a puzzle.

My first step was to choose which Louies to feature, as I found out there are lots of Louies within the Disney universe to choose from, and to place each Louie with an appropriate instrument. I chose 4 Louies; the duck, the chef, the orangutan and the alligator.

I love drawing musical instruments, so creating this piece was a chance for me to nerd out. By the way, I was like second chair trumpet in high school so... be impressed.

I wanted to make sure the instruments in the band had as much character as the characters themselves, so I designed them first. I wanted to wrap the Louies around them, almost as if each instrument sprouted a Louie. Yeah yeah. I just really wanted to draw some instruments.

This was a new technique I pursued. Just focus on shapes and composition in illustrator.

Doing small commissions on a regular basis allows me to try out new things without the risk of eating up billable hours on a larger project. For this drawing I did composition studies using shapes in Illustrator, rather than drawing in my sketchbook. It's certainly a different way to approach a visual problem and it seemed to work for this drawing.

I will typically work right next to source material. How did illustrators do it before the web? Baffling!

This is a screen grab of how typically work in Illustrator. I choose colors before starting on an illustration and frequently place research images/sketches directly onto the screen, drawing right next to them. Nothing remarkable, but I am always interested in other techniques, and thought I would share one of mine.

The final piece. Which one is your favorite? I like Louie.

You can see this piece larger over on my site. Thanks!