Illustration Roulette One: Appear Blackmail Whale

The inaugural Illustration Roulette is here, and we are FLIPPIN' PSYCHED. Whale pun intended. 

Illustration Roulette is an idea that has been brewing in Katherine's brain for many months, but launching Party Sally while owning Script Merchant, Inc. and also trying to get more than 6 hours of sleep per night meant that it had to wait. Until now. 

Here's the rundown on Illustration Roulette as we initially intend it (it may change, who knows! help us help you.): 

Who: me and you and everyone 

What: Illustration Roulette

When: as often as we can, aiming for every Friday, indefinitely

Where: Instagram, using hashtag #psillustrationroulette (oh we do love our hashtags, don't we?)

Why: to get better at illustration and/or copywriting, ideally simultaneously

How: every Wednesday Katherine will pick a number 1 through 4 out of a hat (or bowl or shoe) that determines how many words she picks out of the NEXT hat which contains previously recorded words in the English language (that you have submitted. send us words in the comments here or on Insta!). We all explore the relationship between these words using illustration, writing, or both, and post them starting Friday of each week. Sometimes we may just illustrate a cool picture, sometimes we may include a short story, sometimes we may simply handletter a quote. It just depends! We'll get silly together and feature everyone's attempts. We'll add new words to the hat every week.

Since it's the first ever Roulette, and we predicted it to be somewhat confounding, we did this first round without including you guys. SORRY.

Katherine set an online random word generator to spit out 3 words and went with whatever the first output was. 

And that was... APPEAR  BLACKMAIL  WHALE

Katherine told Allison, and with zero guidance or collusion they set out to make something of the words. 

Katherine's roulette weaves the tragic tale of Tamela the whale, forced to appear at Lucky's Guys' Club every Friday lest the owner tell all of her fishy friends that she doesn't really belong. She's a mammal, after all. 

Katherine is also sure there's some searing indictment of Sea World in there somewhere. 

Allison's roulette reveals that she's a sucker for a good homophonic pun and that she gives no f*$#s (fishes?) that Katherine is pun-averse. Aggressively straight-forward, here we have a pier, a black male, and a whale. And it's killer (Katherine made this pun in a moment of weakness).

Feel free to follow your own path with this first Roulette, or join us next Wednesday for round 2! All related posts will be tagged with #psillustrationroulette so that you can easily find them.

At the end of each Illustration Roulette post, we'll be sure to include some progress and process shots as well as a list of tools we used to create our entries. 

Katherine's tools: 

Palomino Blackwing to sketch

Sakura Micron size 05 to outline 

Princeton Neptune round watercolor brushes size 10 and 2 to paint

Variety of Daniel Smith and Windsor & Newton professional watercolors

Katherine's process: 

Katherine likes to illustrate in pieces, especially when there are small letters involved, and then assemble in Photoshop. Below is her original piece before scanning and editing.

Allison's tools: 

Graphik 0.3 to outline

Holbein artist's watercolors

Windsor & Newton Sceptre Gold II round watercolor brush size 2

Other teeny tiny brush, probably size 000

Allison's process: 

Just paint the whole damn thing already

That's all for round one of Party Sally Illustration Roulette! Party on.