I have recently discovered an emphasis on process in my own workflow
that sometimes proves counter-intuitive.
The glossy shine of this thing’s eye-seeded body and the drops of its venom are rendered first with sharp lines.
I change my mind later in the process and render them in a gradient of the colors used in the spider’s webbed egg-parachutes (upper left).
By keeping both variations – the white stroke on the outside and the gradient overtop, I may have ended up with too much visual complexity, just a wall of noise too dense to read as anything but blank white from a distance.
But I DO pack more data into each inch of screenspace! And that’s part of the archival power of art, I think – I am encoding part of me into this spider by drawing it, and part of me into the crocheted berries on the Christmas tree this year, and another part that grows back tenfold every time I cook a meal.
Sketched in ballpoint on paper, then rendered out with mouse & keyboard in Illustrator.