.... a Mermaid of course!
I know, not a natural process of development but that's what happened with this latest illustration. The brief was to create a bright and colorful kids illustration visualizing the concept of imagination. Ideas pop up at the oddest time and rarely when I'm sat at my desk with pencil poised. I'm sure this is the same for many of us and that's why I seem to have sketch pads scattered around the house. Hence this quick thumb sketch. The idea was harking back to those flip pads I remember as a kid. As much as I liked the initial idea I wasn't sure if A. Pandas posses an imagination and B. if they did would they use it to imagine themselves as robots!
I know, not a natural process of development but that's what happened with this latest illustration. The brief was to create a bright and colorful kids illustration visualizing the concept of imagination. Ideas pop up at the oddest time and rarely when I'm sat at my desk with pencil poised. I'm sure this is the same for many of us and that's why I seem to have sketch pads scattered around the house. Hence this quick thumb sketch. The idea was harking back to those flip pads I remember as a kid. As much as I liked the initial idea I wasn't sure if A. Pandas posses an imagination and B. if they did would they use it to imagine themselves as robots!
OK, so I decided to go with a slightly more conventional approach (assuming mermaids are more conventional!)
This is a snap shot of the work in progress. By this stage the idea was, thankfully fully formed. I'd refined the sketch and inked it up with a fantastic new grey tone Copic liner on extra smooth Bristol Board - what else. (That's the first snap on the top left).
From here I continued with Sketchbook Pro. The important element was to try and stick to my original colour palette and keep the illustrative look. The only deviation I allowed myself was to draw a slightly more realistic finish on the fish tail as well as the ring binders. Nearly happy.
This is a snap shot of the work in progress. By this stage the idea was, thankfully fully formed. I'd refined the sketch and inked it up with a fantastic new grey tone Copic liner on extra smooth Bristol Board - what else. (That's the first snap on the top left).
From here I continued with Sketchbook Pro. The important element was to try and stick to my original colour palette and keep the illustrative look. The only deviation I allowed myself was to draw a slightly more realistic finish on the fish tail as well as the ring binders. Nearly happy.
I still needed to make sure the flip book 'sat properly', to make sure it looked like it actually existed. So the few final touches included sketching in the flip book back ground, adding some additional pages behind the picture and then some drop shadow to put it in place. After some slight changes to the tone and detail to the tail I added a bit of 'wear and tear' detail to the corners of the page. Now it looks as if the flip book has pages that you could turn it's time to turn them over and see what other combinations we can create! (Well, that's the idea for the next illustration)
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