Researching Shelsey Birch Designs

An Interpretation into Shelsey Birch Illustrations

Where Shelsey's work is characterised by a mixture of concepts of femininity, the warmth of the women, the savoir faire and the halo that surrounds the world of all this woman mixed with masculinity and severity of geometry, danger, weapons and this series of elements linked to the world of men. Hence the use of a sober palette, where the pale colours, black and dark tones prevail in most of the creative illustrations. In this pencil draw I tried to imitate her style and composition with the subdued tones.

                             

I started with a rough sketch of this design. This drawing was done freehand. The hardest part  was getting the eyes right. I love the sweet heart face shape with the dark devious eyes. 

A Pencil Drawing of the illustration.  

Here I decided to change the silhouette of the illustration to a colour interpretation

In this illustration I used a combination of Corel draw anmd Photoshop. 

• Step 1. I traced over Shelseys illustration using the 3 point curve tool in Corel draw. Shaping the lines as went along. 
• Step 2 I exported the image over to Photoshop, where I used various brushes Chalk 23 and the Smudge Tool to create watercolour effect. This was also enhanced by the use of the drop shadows and pattern fill and gradient effects. Its not an exact replica. I found the eyes particularly difficult to do. However I quite pleased with the over all look.