ROUGHS … Illustrative Short-hand May 27, 2010, by Chris Pelicano in Design
A previous blog post introduced you to "thumbnails" as a visual language "spoken" by artists and designers, allowing them to explore, convey, and evaluate concepts quickly. The examples given were thumbnails leading up to the finished graphic design of a logo for Family 911 Media. This post introduces you to the "thumbnails" of illustration, known as rough sketches.
Rough sketches (roughs) explore illustrative concepts and compositions in much the same way that thumbnails explore logo designs and layout concepts.
Above, you will see four roughs for a book cover illustration depicting Don Juan of Austria. Each rough leaves room for the book title to display prominently at the top of the composition. Since the book is biographical, the cover art could depict any number of important moments or events in the main character's life.
As you can see, three of the roughs depict Don Juan as a dashing soldier on a horse. The forth rough shows him on the bridge of a ship. Since the climax of the story involved his leadership of the multi-national armada that won the sea battle of Lepanto, the publisher chose to pursue the ship captain approach. The finished painting is similar to the fourth rough, but the setting became a formal portrait rather than a live-action scene.
Illustrative roughs deal primarily with composition, the placement of large story-telling components. Details are overlooked in the ROUGH SKETCH stage … they are attended to later. The use of rough sketches facilitates communication between artist and client, which facilitates communication between client and customer via the finished product.
Communication is at the heart of the Trinity Consulting design process. We employ the language of ROUGH SKETCHES, when needed, to help our clients to "tell their story".
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