Pictorical

The sketch

The ink stage

The finished Professor Challenger!

   On Wednesday the 6th of April, I followed a link from a member of the Illustrator's Guild group on Linked In. It was for a new company looking for illustrators for classic stories which they would publish to digital media such as the iPad, at the very least.
   I sent in my application which really was just a link to my portfolio site at www.athertoncustoms.com. A few days later, Friday actually, I received an e-mail from Victor, the co-founder of the company, inviting me to join. He had looked through my portfolio and thought my style would be a good fit for the kind of illustration they were looking to have done.
   So the next step was to sign up on their site by entering contact and payment info for when the residual income starts pouring in! The deal is that I get to choose a story from hundreds of manuscripts, right now they are all from dead authors, classic stories, I don't know what the future will hold but for now I chose a story by Arthur Conan Doyle called "The Disintegration Machine". Very clever and imaginative story. The process then requires that I choose one scene to illustrate a full page. I've attached my illustration to this blog post for all to see.
   I am very pleased with how this turned out. I thoroughly enjoy working in pen and ink then coloring in illustrator. I am hoping to be able to render illustrations similar to those in my other published books, more digital, not because it's easier, because it's definitely not, but because it is more unique and I believe stands out from the crowd of pen and ink watercolorists! I'd love to hear your feedback about this new illustration. Do you like the style, does the emotion come through?
   I plan on keeping this blog updated with the progress of this new endeavor. Thanks for reading!