I recently completed a project in which I illustrated various scenes involving school safety planning and emergency response exercises. My drawings were used for a slide presentation and printed in a training handbook. Initial discussions with my client included visualizing different concepts with quickly drawn thumbnail sketches, refining ideas, image research and creating the final illustrations. The series of sixty images were all drawn with a Staedtler Lumocolor F pen on tracing paper with no image larger than 4”x5”. The project budget only allowed for black and white line drawings without any color.
I created the images from numerous sources such as drawing from imagination (which I call cartooning), tracing directly from photographs downloaded from the Internet, and combining sources to generate final images.
Thumbnail Sketches from Imagination
As I read the training document, I tried to visualize many of the elements found in the text. I quickly jotted down some “visual notes” that depicted school safety situations, groups of teams, actions and the many individual components that go into planning and implementing school safety training exercises.
Illustrations from Internet Sources
I searched “emergency response” on the Internet and found these photographs from a school safety training exercise (the victims were just actors). I lightened the images in Photoshop and printed them 3”x3” for tracing.
The line drawings were quickly illustrated using a loose diagonal hatching technique. I created a mix of compositions, some with frames and others without, maintaining a similar drawing style throughout the series of 60 subjects.
This drawing supported text describing how emergency response teams must learn how to interface with local media covering school safety events.
This drawing was traced directly from the reference photograph with only a minor change to the graphics on the helicopter. I used a simple diagonal hatching technique for the gray tones. Note: if you have trouble seeing detail while you are tracing from a photograph, illuminate the image by working over a light table.
This “cartoon diagram” visualized the complexity of coordinating a school safety training exercise where participants and agencies are communicating with each other. The drawings below represent the variety of drawing subjects and formats from the series.
This photograph was a valuable source for tracing the wheelchair. I modified the image by adding the elevator and second person to depict a school emergency situation that required a planning response.
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