The first newspaper of the 2013 spring semester featured a gun illustration on the front page by design staffer Sarah Delk, who shares a little about her creative process below.
The day before classes started I walked into The Daily Tar Heel office to start my first shift after winter break. Instead of being handed a paper with a list of stories to layout on an inside page, the Director of Visuals, Allison Russell, had a project for me.
The first paper was running a story about guns in schools. My job was to draw a gun barring school doors as a graphic to illustrate the story.
I started off on my iPhone looking for a picture of school doors and a gun on Google for a reference. I found the doors easily, but not a gun I liked.
I was a little picky about the gun, because I wanted it to be accurate since I grew up shooting and I am the vice president of The Tar Heel Rifle and Pistol Club at UNC-CH.
I remembered I had pictures of guns my dad was selling on my camera roll. Scrolling back through I found a Colt AR 15 that I liked.
With pictures at my disposal I started drawing. I found the biggest desk space I could in an office full of computers and I sat down with my pencil and extra-long computer paper.
Looking from my iPhone to my paper I spent about an hour and a half drawing a gun on one sheet of paper and doors on the other. I did not draw any practice sketches because I had a visual in my head of what I wanted; so instead I immediately started on the final draft.
When I finished I scanned them into the computer to be merged together and have color added in Photoshop.
The only major problem that arose was that the illustration of the gun was too long to fit in the scanner. It was quick fix though; I was able to go back and shorten the barrel without distorting the gun.
After the illustration of the doors and the gun were scanned, my part in the project was complete. From there the job went to Allison who did the final edits in Photoshop to create the illustration that appeared in the paper on January 9, 2013.
Check out the article that accompanied this graphic here.
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