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Books Art & Illustration

Creating the Art for Kathryn Cramer’s “Am I Free to Go?”

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Published on December 13, 2012

Scott Bakal on creating the art for Kathryn Cramer’s story: Am I Free to Go?
Scott Bakal on creating the art for Kathryn Cramer’s story: Am I Free to Go?

I really enjoyed and love the piece I did earlier in the year for Irene Gallo at Tor—in fact, it is probably one of my favorites this year. A few weeks ago, Irene emailed me to create a new piece for another upcoming short story called “Am I Free To Go?” by Kathryn Cramer.

After the first go around of the 55 page story, I was all over the place. The story is written in a rather fragmented way so the second time around, I really had to hone in on what was going on in the story. I finally found a few visual cues that I thought would work very well together. Not to give too much away because you should read it, there was a connection with jail, inmate clothing and long stem roses that were perfect for a neat visual.

Scott Bakal on creating the art for Kathryn Cramer’s story: Am I Free to Go?

After the first read, I knew this was going to be a very limited palette focusing on red and the image started to build in my mind each time I read it. It eventually got to the point where the three thumbnails above—which is essentially the same thing—was the only thing I thought would work for this job. I presented the three as the “idea” more than a finished sketch. Irene loved the idea and trusted me to do the right thing with the composition and let me do whatever I needed to do.

Scott Bakal on creating the art for Kathryn Cramer’s story: Am I Free to Go?

Scott Bakal on creating the art for Kathryn Cramer’s story: Am I Free to Go?

The screen shot of my computer shows the original thumbnail and the cleaned up sketch of the woman which I continued to play with…mainly just arm and leg lengths and slight changes in the body. The image to the right is the the final composition I decided to work with—I did change how many stripes are on the clothing while I was doing the final painting.

I also wanted to render out the image a little more than what I usually do which I think mixed well with the more graphic and expressive stuff I do.

It was great fun to do this piece and so easy and wonderful working with Irene.

Scott Bakal on creating the art for Kathryn Cramer’s story: Am I Free to Go?

This article originally appeared on Scott Bakal’s blog.


Scott Bakal is a nationally recognized artist and illustrator who’s clients have included The New York Times, Discover Magazine, Penthouse Magazine and many others. View a gallery of his work on Tor.com.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Scott Bakal

Author

Scott Bakal is a nationally recognized artist and illustrator first doing his undergrad at School of Visual Arts in NYC then a decade later earning an MFA in Illustration from the University of Hartford.

Bakal has won over one hundred recognitions for his work from American Illustration, 3x3, HOW, Alt Weekly Awards, Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles, Communication Arts, Spectrum and is included in Luerzer's 200 Best Illustrators Worldwide. He has also received a Silver Medal from the prestigious Society of Illustrators. In 2010, he received the Dean Cornwell Achievement Award from the Society of Illustrators for "conceiving and implementing a customized website portal for the Society, changing the method in which all competitions are judged."

Clients have included the HarperOne, John Wiley & Sons, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Yoga Journal, Businessweek, PlanSponsor, Discover Magazine, The New Republic, Runner's World, Oprah, Natural Solutions and Penthouse Magazine and many others.

Bakal is on the Board of Directors at the Society of Illustrators in New York City and chairs the Student Scholarship Competition and Zankel Scholarship which are the largest illustration student competitions in the world. He was also elected to the Sanford B.D. Low Illustration Collection as a Committee Member at the New Britain Museum of American Art.

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