A Sunflowerman illustration of Howard Parr's Collector Archetype, featured in iW Magazine.

The Diver

The month of June invites 'The Diver' just in time for the summer heat to draw us back to water. Let me tell you that here in Athens Greece we could use some diving days soon. Sun on this Latitude is unforgiving.

To understand 'The Diver' you have to know that he is a man of action, utility and of deep understanding. He is, as Howard says, 'the Intellectual Octopus.'

Let me take you through the process of developing the illustration to the painting you see above.

The Illustration

It began with a brief from Caroline Joffe of iW. She is a great person to work with. I cannot speak highly enough of the work she puts in and the confidence she instills in the work I create. She shared with me the notes about who 'The Diver' is.

From the brief I came up with about 5 thumbnail sketches for Caroline's team to choose.
Here below are my three favorite examples. The option on the far right is my favorite. I love the fish eye perspective and the huge focal point on the Diver himself.

After the Thumbnails I decided to take all of the ideas and develop them just a little bit further with some extra detail.

The most straightforward image was the central sketch. We decided on the storytelling aspects of the layout and I moved on to a color study, incomplete as it may be.

Time was beating down on me for the completion of the Diver. My wife and I were making the transition from gorgeous coastal Croatia to the history dense city of Athens, Greece. In crunch time I performed brilliantly- unlike my experience with basketball and tennis during my high school years.

The cheesy smile I had originally painted on fortunately had time to be edited. Now 'The Diver' looks more like Dexter from the t.v. show 'Dexter.' Or so says a commenter on instagram. I don't know the show that well but it is a compliment I'm sure.