I try to start my days out with random warm-up sketches; usually the result is a mess, but sometimes something strikes my fancy and I start falling down a rabbit hole. I really fell in love with the Gunship design and wanted to share some of the process sketches — and the most excellent final illustration!
It started as a rough thumbnail (below, left-hand side), but quickly took overthe page with exploration sketches:
I tried a quick colour composition:
A detail of the rear gunner:
It took a little while to figure out the shape of the wings, and even took to Instagram for advice and inspiration:
Even when I started playing with colour and cleaned-up renders, the wings were still in a state of flux…
…. but eventually I settled on this configuration:
Inevitably I started working on a cutaway illustration. Cutaway illustrations are some of my favourite projects to work on, and often the conclusion of personal designs that I fall in love with … like this one!
The cutaway in-progress:
