Photoshop Creative Issue

“M

y focus has always been on narrative and conceptual

illustration,” says Alexandru Savescu, a Romanian

illustrator and graphic designer currently residing in

London. “I am passionate about portraiture, traditional drawing and

printing techniques.”

Alexandru’s appreciation for all art forms is represented in this

piece, The Mystery Man of Maryland. Alexandru used traditional

drawing techniques, including type, in the piece, and listened to a lot of

jazz to help create the atmosphere for his image; not to mention the

effort he put into researching location. Ultimately though, Photoshop

was the key tool in bringing all these inspirations together.

“For me, Photoshop is a way of recreating these techniques and

maximising productivity, helping me change and rework my ideas

without interrupting the creative flow,” he says. “My favourite

Photoshop tools, the very foundation of my illustrations, are actually

quite common: the standard Brush and Eraser and the Lasso. Besides

these, layer and clipping masks and colour overlays are my next

favourite thing.”

How Alexandru Savescu concocted an atmosphere of film noir with Photoshop brushes,

lots of research and adjustments

The Mystery Man of

Maryland

Preliminary sketches

01

My travelling drawing kit is a small tablet and a memory stick. After

a thorough research on the location and time setting of the story

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F Scott Fitzgerald, and a four hour

flight, I made a few preliminary sketches.

Adjustments

04

A couple of colour layers are added on top with a reduced fill and

opacity with either Difference or Exclude used as the blend mode.

I then added a Color Lookup filter and I was done. I was listening to jazz

music continuously throughout the process to get into character and this

helped me create a detective/noir setting.

Colouring the image

02

Every colour I use is set to a specific layer and starts as

100% black, which gets a colour overlay on top and

textures applied as masks. I prefer doing this because it allows

me to change my mind later on and I can also use the layers to

screen-print the illustration any time.

Build the composition

03

This is the part where Photoshop takes over from any

traditional practice. I am a bit choosy with my colour

palettes and it takes me a few hours and many different versions

to decide. I used turquoise-vermillion colour contrast to create

drama and heighten the action.

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