Snoqualmie

Shaweet!

Please note that this entry is being posted in the category "This is precisely what the fuck I am talking about".

Now that I look at it closely, I'm noticing just how much more stylized it is than my original idea. If you remember, my first choice artist was Marie Wadman, whose work is precise and botanical and shows every vein and bump of every leaf. But her colors are muted and subtle, and I wanted a riot of green and red. So I went with Mike Davis (stupid nonnavigable flash site), who lets botanical detail go and hang but has the knack of putting down an outrageous color and making it look like it's always been there. So my tomatoes are lush and round but the leaves are splashes of green and yellow curviness that tricks your eye into seeing leafy convolution that isn't there. And I'm damned pleased about it.

My favorite thing? Check out the shine on the tomatoes. Yes, yes, it's almost photorealistic. But it gets even better than that. See the very lightest part where there's almost no red? Think of this like a coloring book -- you've got the outlines and you're filling in the color freehand without any kind of shading scheme laid down for you. That's pretty much how it went. So if you're me, you start by figuring out where the shine is going to be and put in some white or yellow that you can color around. But there's no white there! There's no ink at all! Those shine spots are completely bare skin! How much drawing experience do you have to have to be able to shade in a perfect shiny globe without a single spot of unnecessary ink, and get it absolutely right five times in a row?

A fuckload, I think. Mike is my hero.