“Illustration is about planning, and fine art is about discovery,” David Julian told me when I interviewed him for “Strange Beauty.” What a great sentiment. Julian, a deeply curious artist who loves to experiment, explained that he must approach his commercial photo illustration assignments very differently than his personal fine art projects.
For commericial illustration work — clients include SmartMoney, MacWorld, The Los Angeles Times and Microsoft — Julian must work fast and efficiently to reach a client’s goal: planning is key.
For fine art work — projects include “Taken From The Heart” and “Explorations” — Julian must let his imagination run free, digging up answers to questions that he has not even fully articulated: success is in the willingness to discover.
As Julian shared his different processes for creating a number of images, I realized — not surprisingly — that his commercial work depends on discovery as well as planning, and that his fine art requires planning as well as discovery.
Without an openness to discover, illustrations would fall flat. Without the ability to plan, fine art would never come into existence.
The Discovery (and Planning) of “Transformation”
In the same issue of AfterCapture for which I wrote “Strange Beauty,” I wrote the “What’s Inside?” column featuring Julian’s “Transformation,” a personal fine art image. Although Julian emphasized the very fluid, open-ended process of discovery that lead to “Transformation,” his process is testament to the fact that planning was critical to his success.
My “What’s Inside? David Julian: ‘Transformation’” article begins:
“Transformation.” This was the word running through David Julian’s mind as he left a creative support meeting of a group he founded with other artists in Seattle. The challenge: create an image based on this single word. When completed and added to Julian’s online portfolio, the image would be licensed for the book cover of Debra Lynne Katz’s book Extraordinary Psychic. “Transformation” is representative both of Julian’s commercial photo illustrations, as well as his fine art work. “Illustration is about planning, and fine art is about discovery,” Julian explains.
“I imagined a woman going through a dream of personal transformation,” Julian says. “I feel that the metamorphosis from cocoon to butterfly is one of the most visible transformations we can hope to witness.” Julian made a rough pencil sketch of a winged woman rising above a town with a full moon above. This was Julian’s planning. His discoveries took place as he worked in Photoshop CS4.
[Continue reading to see how Julian's process unfolds, or download the "What's Inside?" PDF to better see the layers that make up "Transformation."] Continue reading “Illustration Is About Planning, Fine Art Is About Discovery”
