Sunset is a re-creation of an artwork titled Mural (click here to see it). Mural was drawn with markers on 16 x 20 inch canvases back in 2001. My goal for Sunset was to create a sharper more intense version of Mural.

The new version of Mural would be drawn entirly on computer using a pen & tablet. The first step in the process was to trace over a picture of Mural. You can see the early sketch of Sunset in the image below. The seconed image shows an early tracing blended with a picture of Mural.

Many of my older artworks like Mural do not match the size and shape of my digital works. The difference in shape left a lot of space at the top and bottom of the artwork. To overcome this problem I added some heavy black lines to fill in the extra space. The thick lines helped to focus the viewers attention towards the center of the artwork. At this point I relized that I would have to add a lot of new content to filll out the illustration.

I began to brainstorm for ideas by drawing anything I thought might look interesting. Almost none of what I drew in the pictures below made it to the final version, however, I did end up keeping a few basic circular shapes. The sketches below were a launching point that helped me build up some more interesting ideas.

As you may have noticed some lines are black and other lines are a transparent blue color. The solid black lines are complete lines that I intended to use in the final illustration. The blue lines are rough sketches. After erasing and redrawing large portions of the artwork I arrived at what you see below. To keep the look of Sunset closer to the Mural I decided not to use any human figures.

The pictures below show a few ideas for background patterns. The color image is a close up of the patterns used in the original artwork (Mural). I wasn't really happy with most of the shapes that I initially came up with. I decided to use a more geometric design made of five circles. I chose a shape similar to the stars at bottom for the background of the large spirals in Sunset.

Below you can see the lines I used in the final version with the circular and star patterns filling out the background space. You may notice that the stars are orange instead of black. For some reason I chose to color the stars and blend them into the background instead of just laying them on top. I think the stars looked better in color. I also wanted the star filled spirals to stand out from the rest of the image.

At this point my outlines were totally complete and I started the coloring process. However I did end up making a few more small changes to the lines later on. Most of the changes I made after starting the coloring process were to balance the right and left sides of the illustration. I was very happy with the way the lines turned out overall. Click next to learn how I colored Sunset.