Freestyle Academy proudly presents

The Lawyer: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Benjamin Shell (2018)

The story that this illustration is based on is about a lawyer. The lawyer, Matt, lives a morose life in Los Angeles, despite being a very successful and wealthy lawyer. I took inspiration for this character from some of the lawyers and adults that I have come across in the Bay Area.

My first step in the development of my illustration consisted of brainstorming the different parts of my creature as well as sketching the background and the creature itself. The background proved to be quite challenging as our background had to incorporate linear perspective drawing. This is a style of perspective drawing where the relative size, shape, and position of objects is determined by imagined lines convening on a point on the horizon. After initial sketches for both my background and character, the project went into Adobe Illustrator. In this program, I traced images of my various animal parts, colored, manipulated, and then pieced them all together into one creature. My final creature consisted of a basset hound head, hawk body/wings, bullhorns, and bear legs. The basset hound head was chosen because, in my opinion, it went well with Matt’s sad and depressed characteristic. The hawk body represented his desire to fly away and leave his current situation behind him. The bullhorns represented Matt’s hidden and deep down anger. Lastly, the bear legs represented his resilience and strength when faced with adversity. I also drew a suit onto my character to demonstrate his profession. The scene I choose to illustrate is one where Matt is looking out to the city from the hills after a long day at work. Overall, I think that the illustration turned out well but if I had more time, I would have liked to illustrate his car and add more to the skyline.
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