Creating the Anne's Donuts Piece

I've always loved drawing for friends. My earliest memory of this is when, in the sixth grade, I started drawing full page Looney Tunes characters from tiny pictures on pencils. This was all done in the middle of class, and though I can't really remember getting in trouble, I'm sure it annoyed my teachers. In the seventh grade I progressed to Winnie the Pooh and Tigger images from my daily calendar. 

When my friend asked me to draw Anne's Donuts for her husband for Father's Day I was really excited. I had just finished my Center Theater drawing and had learned some lessons along the way that I was anxious to test on a new piece. I also loved the idea of doing another Rocky Mount landmark - one that I had actually been to (unlike Center), and one that was so dear to a friend.

Then I got the reference photos (below). My first thought was, "Uh oh. I may have promised more than I can deliver." I tried to find an old image of the old shop on Google, but came up with nothing.  Feeling a little deflated, I told my friend that the best I could probably do was to re-ceate the picture on the right. 

Then I found this image on Rocky Mount Way Back When, which is a goldmine if you haven't been there. 

So, I had a pretty complete view of the building, but I liked the perspective of the original reference photo better. It felt more visually interesting and wasn't cluttered by the house next door. I also noticed the stump and realized there had been a tree in front of the building back in the day. I decided to throw everything into photoshop and see what I could come up with. The Frankensteinish reference below was the result.

I used transfer paper and a ruler to draw my initial lines, and then drew and re-drew the image on the transfer paper until I thought the perspective looked believable. This is a trick I picked up from Patrice Barton, whose illustrations I LOVE. Once I was satisfied with the lines I had on the transfer paper, I laid them down on the Bristol board. 

At that point, all that was left was to start filling in details with my pencils. It seems like a long way from the lines above to the finished drawing below, but the lines are the really scary part. If I have my lines right, I'm much more confident that my shading will look good. I've learned to be super anal about the preliminary work so that I don't have to waste time, or possibly an entire drawing attempt, on a piece that I have to re-do because I didn't have the proportions or angles right. 

After that I scanned the drawing into Photoshop, darkened the lines, and digitally painted it.