Flying Carpet Salesman

The Colour Collective colour this week was 'barn red', a dull red that's not really a colour I use a lot of. It reminded me of persian carpets, so I decided to redo an old illustration and update it.

Originally there was going to be a bit more to this illustration, but although I'd set aside some hours to finish it off on Friday, they were all eaten up by other stuff, and lofty ambitions of backgrounds and other characters had to be jettisoned for something I could realistically finish in the time left to me. Instead, I added the parrot, to lift the colour scheme a bit. All that dull red and orange and beige was, I felt, lacking in zing. The whole thing needed a cool colour to offset all the warms. 

Here is the original illustration. I'd come across an old promotional postcard featuring it during the week, and thought it was fun enough for updating. I've always been fond of it, but it is definitely looking a bit old. 

He was inspired by a man I saw briefly out of a taxi window in Malaysia, in 2010 or 2011. He didn't have a turban or carpets, or a feather, but he was a round little man with a beard and a motor scooter, and I went from there. 

It was originally done as an example of work for educational publishing, in greyscale and with solid black outlines. I do a lot of educational publishing and it all involves solid outlines. However, last year I took an Illustration Department Illustration Workshop (My piece 'The Quest' came out of that) and I was told I should lose the black outlines. Obviously I can't do that in my day job of blackline master illustrations, or the colouring book I'm creating, but for my portfolio I'm trying to take that advice on board.  

The old illustration was created in Photoshop CS4 (I think) with a Wacom Intuos 3. The new one was created in Photoshop CC2015 with a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2, using Kyle Webster's brushes (China Marker, Gouache a Go Go and a textured watercolour brush) and two textures from textures.com. About 6 hours all up, I think.