742 Evergreen Terrace - The Simpsons House
Intro
I'm so excited to announce that I've partnered with Best Pet Shop in Town and Scenic Simpsons to bring you these new prints inspired by the show! I've created atmospheric renditions of the iconic Simpson family's home as well as the Kwik-E-Mart, with both day and night versions. I wanted the illustrations to be a mix between my art style and the show rather than a fully accurate recreation of The Simpson’s art style.
This blog is a detailed breakdown of how I created the prints, as well as some insight into my process in general, enjoy!
Research
The most important phase of the entire process. Doing research for this print was incredibly easy as there are so many references from the show at every angle and hour of the day, so it’s a bit different when working from a cartoon. However it’s usually not this easy, I don’t live in Los Angeles so I can’t get my own references, for my regular work I rely almost always rely on Google Maps.
Sketch
As with all my work, I start with a detailed line art, the more detailed this initial sketch is the easier the entire process will be. As you can see, for this print I focused on the building itself and decided pretty early on that I’d work out all the other details later.
Colour Study
I then work on a rough colour study, I rarely show these off as I’m so particular about the clean finish of my work and these rough sketches go against all of that. This part of the process is so important to the outcome of the final piece, if I can’t even get the colour study to look right then I know that it’s just not worth working on. I have a folder full of unfinished sketches that I try to go back to once I have a clear head.
For the colour palette, I’ll pull straight from my previous work, if you look through my entire portfolio you’ll notice that almost all of the colours are the same in each piece, just used in different ways. It’s how I keep such a consistent style, or it’s OCD, who knows.
The Final
Then it’s straight on to the final. The most common question I get is “How long does each print take you?” and I never have an answer. This part can take anywhere from under a week to over three weeks if I’m struggling to get the details right, I’ve found that the more work I put into the initial research and sketching phases the quicker the entire process will be.
And of course I do everything in Adobe Photoshop, from sketch to final. A common misconception is that I work in Adobe Illustrator, but I actually draw the piece in a larger document and then scale it down to the correct size once it’s finished to get those extra crisp lines in my work that are mistaken for vectors. For example, I’ll draw something in an 18 x 24 inch document at 400 DPI, and then once it’s finished I create a new document at 18 x 24 inches and 300 DPI and place the original file in there. Clean.
Vehicles
Vehicles are always so fun to draw, especially one that’s as iconic as Homer's Sedan. I usually work on these in a separate document and then drag them over once they’re finished. I have a very handy file that’s full of non-descript vehicles that I can pull from when I want to fill out the composition a bit. I just tell myself it’s the same person driving their car throughout several of my prints.
Variants
Variants are a great way to breathe new life into a piece once it’s finished. For my Simpsons-themed prints, I always knew I was going to offer a day and night version of each piece, I used screencaps from the early seasons and pulled colours straight from the show, I love how the variants turned out as they feel so nostalgic to me. There’s something so peaceful about Springfield at night, it reminds me of watching the show when I was younger.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this little breakdown, I’ll try to do more of them in the future if people find them helpful. But in the meantime, all four Simpsons prints are available now for a limited time on the Second Best Pet Shop store!
