Illustration Process

There's so much I have to scan and upload, it's ridiculous! For the next few days, I think I'll post some old sketches for the hell of it. I feel kind of crappy for not updating here as much as I intended. Anyways, this post is all about how I got to my final illustrations.  These were done in "Drawing for Illustration" class with Dennis Nolan. Enjoy.

City Light : 

Our prompt was to illustrate a city. It was easier said than done since I'm terrible at perspective. I can't even draw a straight line with a ruler! These are brainstorm sketches of the first things that popped into my head. When you don't know what to do for an assignment, keep putting down ideas on paper until you do.

 After looking at some concept art for the game, The Last of Us, I wanted to do a busy, post-apocalyptic scene. Also, I really wanted to draw kids on telephone poles. I thought the image brought out the "adventurous youth" character, which is always fun.

Then, I wanted to find a way to bring back the angular fish since just having a post-apocalyptic scene wasn't enough. In fact, it got boring very quickly and since I was bad at drawing boxes to begin with, I decided to keep things simple. I figured I should build things up slowly to prevent making a giant mess of a composition.

Voodoo Tragedy : 

This assignment was simply something with hands, so the first idea that popped in my head was pinning a voodoo doll. I guess I'm kind of dark-minded like that, haha. However, I didn't want to just draw a still life, so I added little dollies in rebellion. I wanted it to be busy with action, but for time and composition's sake, I had to cut out a lot of details. 

Designs for the voodoo dolls. The third sketch is a voodoo doll I made for reference. I should've taken more reference photos for the final compositions. I'm not too happy with how the random boxes came out (then again, I did plow through this piece in three hours the day before class to prevent a longer all-nighter).

Wrapping it up with a few quick hand practices and lighting references. 

Sea Lady :

For this project, we had to combine three animals. I loved sketching for this assignment. As usual, once I got to the final illustration, I lost all the energy that my doodles had. It's so frustrating, but at least my professor assured me this vicious cycle was perfectly normal. 

Putting her in a composition was rather difficult since she has so much going on. I had a lot of fun with her terrified octopus friend. 

A Note :

Although I wasn't a huge fan of this assignment, the lesson was valuable. Basically, how to tell a story through still lives. At first, I wanted illustrate an old story called "The Red Shoes". Back then, red shoes weren't allowed in the church dress code. One girl ignored this rule and was cursed to dance forever.  In the end, she has a lumberjack chop off her feet and the feet continued to dance away.

As much as I wanted to continue this narrative, it was turned down since I was focusing too much on the girl than her shoes, so I focused on a classic form of Japanese bullying—thumbtacks in shoes. In middle school, I wanted to know what is was like to be in a Japanese school environment. Almost immediately, I had someone disliking me for being Japanese-American. She slipped thumbtacks in my shoes and left a nasty note saying, "Speaking English doesn't make you special, bitch!"

Alrighty, I'm over and out. 

-aKino