Bigfoot Poster Tutorial

You might remember Oregon-based Peruvian designer and illustrator, Santiago Uceda’s poster art as featured in a previous Ape on the Moon post here. What he’s great at is the hand-drawn, rough style of his artwork.

Santiago is back to share his step by step work process behind one of his recent posters, featuring the Portland hipster Bigfoot. Enjoy!

Materials: Pencil; Sumi ink and brush; Block printing ink; Roller; Plexiglass; X-acto knife.

1. Ideas

The challenge was to create a poster for a Society6 Portland poster series based on fun facts centering around Portland in Oregon.

One thing that is often associated with the Northwest is the mythical creature Bigfoot. Bigfoot is not necessarily associated with Portland, but I figured this is a place he would call home if he were given the chance.

2. Sketch

I always start with a light pencil or blue pencil sketch and then ink that. I don’t do to many preliminary sketches. There’s usually a very rough sketch just to get the idea and placement across and after that is final.

I sketch & ink the different elements separately and then assemble and color them in Photoshop.

I wasn’t quite happy with the first Bigfoot, so I drew another one on a separate piece of paper and then collaged them together.

3. Color and Texture

I create my textures with mono-prints or with ink. For the river texture I made some wavy textures with mono-prints. I rolled some ink onto the Plexiglas and made some wavy strokes with a brush.

I then transferred the ink to a piece of sketchbook paper.

Colors don’t really matter at this point, I usually change colors in Photoshop.

For the clouds I cut out some cloud shapes, rolled ink on the Plexi, put clouds face down on ink, place another piece of paper on top of cloud, cut out and then scribble on top of that sheet. The scribbles are transferred onto the cloud cut outs.

The bridge and hand lettering were done with Sumi ink and brush..

Once it’s all been scanned and composed in Photoshop, I start playing with color by applying color to individual layers with layer effects.

The multi-colored rain was a bit much so I toned it down and ended up with a more subdued palette.

And there you have it!

ⓒ Santiago Uceda, 2010

Excellent, thank you Santiago!

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