Blog: Work in progress

12 september, 2021

I tend to start with a very rough sketch. I usually don't have a clear image in my head, I make a rough sketch with some basic shapes and figures. Most of the time I lean back on things I find easier to draw, like animals, flowers and female shapes. I don't want too much open or empty space in the illustration, I might not see them right away though and add elements as the piece comes together. Today I started with a flat pink circle and started to sketch around it to get a basic composition. Once I'm overall happy with how the placement turns out I follow up with some more detailed line-art.

First I’ll lower the opacity of the rough sketch layer and place a new one on top of it. I find it easier to see what lines I want to trace and which to discard. I might add a few more details but not this time. Actually, today I got really lazy and just copied one of the flowers and rotated it.

When I have finished the clean line-art, I go it over once again and add small details here and there. For line-art I use Procreate’s Dry Ink brush with the default settings because I like the texture the best. It works well with both flat and textured colors. In this piece I'm thinking of keeping to flat colors. I don't want to take to long on this illustration, I know that I want this drawing to have an easy feeling. Solid block colors should do it..

I often spend way too long playing with colors, and this time wasn't any different. I landed on a color palette I usually don't use to try and explore something different. I'm not sure if I like it, honestly... It's a bit hard to see each element with this palette. Might change it later. In this one it's okay since there's not a lot going on but if I had way more objects and shapes I would've chosen a different palette. I began color-blocking in a new layer and gave it a few quick shadows with alpha lock.

And that's about it. That's all I managed to do today.