creating an illustration is more than just drawing the first thing that comes to mind. there is a process between the idea and the final result
WORD Association + THUMBNAILS
the prompt for this piece was a fairy tale mashup. the goal was to take two classic fairy tales and create a concept for a new story. I knew i wanted to use the brothers grimm version of frog prince as one of my stories but wasn’t sure about the other half. after creating a short list in my sketchbook of other classic fairy tales and word associating, i was able to narrow it down to 2-3 ideas. after narrowing down my ideas, i created around 20 thumbnails with value to get the ideas out. there really is no wrong way to do this step and it does not need to look pretty!
from here you can pick your top 1-3 thumbnails and create some larger, more refined sketches or go straight to the next step if you have a solid idea. the idea i ended up landing on was my ninth thumbnail for the ‘axolotl prince’ – a combination of the little mermaid by hans christian anderson and of course the frog prince by the brothers grimm.
artist tip: save your thumbnails!
you can reference old thumbnails for future projects especially if they involve the same story/characters
Reference
reference is essential for any illustration – whether it’s searching up images of ‘beach’ or grabbing the nearest friend in reach to take some photo reference. with the rise of ai, it’s critical to pay attention to make sure none of your reference images are ai generated. not only is it unethical -but also inaccurate and can lead to bad habits – especially for young artists starting out. resources like unsplash.com, art books or photos you take yourself are the most reliable.
check out Haley Nang’s website to see her awesome concept art
artist tip: don’t just use one reference!
it’s best to gather dozens of images to avoid copyright issues and also to better understand the subject
Studies
studies are optional but you can also take inspiration from other artists. for this piece, i wanted to reference henry scott tuke, a 19th century impressionist who specialized in beaches and young men. prior to working on this project i started an unfinished master study of his piece “green and gold” in oil to get a feel for his sense of color and his use of brushstrokes. this is something i recommend to both digital and traditional artists who are looking to improve their work.
Character design
Much like master studies, this step is also optional but very useful step much like thumbnails. if you have the figures already fleshed out it makes it much easier to pose them in the illustration. i wanted to test out different values and hairstyles that made this character seem like underwater royalty. at this stage i also realized axolotls are fresh water creatures and decided to use salamanders instead, which are visually similar but can withstand salt water.
value studies
as much as you might want to jump right into color, it is important to consider the values first! value is essential for how well your piece reads both visually and how well the story comes across. originally i wanted to do scene during that day, but after testing out how it would look at night, i could see that the story reads more clearly this way. this is also a good opportunity to adjust your composition if needed – analyze how the gesture conveys the mood of the characters. Is it really reading the way you intended? now is a good time to get some feedback from fellow artists and even non-artists. ask them how it’s reading without describing the prompt or story. if they didn’t get the story – what can you change to make it read better?
color studies
once you have the values locked in, it is much easier to play with color. if i already didn’t have a specific color palette in mind, i would’ve done more than two. here you can see i altered the pose of the characters and refined the composition a bit more. it’s also still loose with not a lot of detail yet. once you’re set on the colors you can start to fine tune and add detail.
digital artist tip: keep it simple!
don’t over complicate the process with dozens of layers! if you find yourself stuck, don’t be afraid to merge layers! just create a copy of the file and merge everything down into 2-4 layers, background, characters and a layer for more complex objects like hair.
final + thoughts
While i wrote this as a step by step process – it’s not always so streamlined. there are times when you’ll need to gather more reference or even go to back to thumbnailing comps after you started value studies. this is just a flow i find to be the most effective, but there are times when i skip steps or do things out of order. what’s most important is finding a process that makes sense to you!