Illustration 102: Follow your gut

This is another illustration for a Business story. The original concept was the reporter's idea (thanks, Matt!). His story was about banks having a difficult time after the fall of IndyMac. Lots of banks have been working to distance themselves from the troubled financial pariah.

Shoulda followed my gut and kept it in play, but my day was wearing long at that point. Live and learn. And keep drawing... even if you hate homework.

Upon reflection, I kinda wish I would have done this particular illustration in another medium, like rough sketch, or even given charcoal another go. This subject matter screamed for something grittier than I gave it. But I did learn a lot about Illustrator in the process; mostly that CS3 is far superior to the CS2 version (next time, I'm definitely brining in the laptop... or working from home).

Everything I do starts with a sketch; this time, I just chose the wrong path for that sketch. This looks too clean and tidy for the IndyMac cloud to look very menacing. Maybe I could have held onto the "tidy" banks, but kept the grittier original IndyMac cloud sketch (below) either as is or in charcoal above it.