Oh hey. So I’ve been getting a bunch of emails and questions regarding my process. While I’m all about the personal replies (and you’ll still get them, don’t worry), I figured I’d prepare this post for easy reference in the future. Time travel was soooooooo tomorrow.
While this is by no means the only method to my madness, it will (hopefully) cover some of the consistencies across much of my work. Today, class, we’ll be going over how I made The Neverland.
I usually start with scribbles on scraps of paper. With this image I had a pretty clear vision in my head so after a couple of sketches I was comfortable moving on to the next stage.
I find working at a VERY small size early on ensures that the purpose of the image is communicating. Without any extra details or distractions I can usually determine if it’s strong enough to move on to the next step. Think big and draw small. I’m sure someone, somewhere, said that before now.
At this point I’m happy with the very rough layout, so I’ve moved on to working at a larger size. Details can now be introduced. For a while I tried working through this stage on the computer but found I was wasting a lot of time. Apparently computers are good for this. I’m not the first (nor will I be the last) to swear by putting pencil to paper, but dang if it isn’t just the best! There’s a sort of alchemy to it that I can’t explain.
If you notice the blue lead, that’s me redrawing the basic forms from the small sketch. My favourite pencils are those mechanical ones (and the cheap ones, they’re just the right size). They never dull and that is awesome. Time for pencil sharpening is a luxury I don’t have.
Computer time! After scanning in the tight sketch I’ll use the dark arts of Photoshop to work with colour. Again, I had a pretty clear idea before getting into it but sometimes hiccups are worked out at this point.
Now that I’m happy with the colours, it’s time to get down to business (and by “business” I mean “draw Captain Hook’s head to look like an island”). Much of my past was spent in Illustrator before I purchased a tablet and I think it’s really shaped my workflow. I tend to work in multiple layers based on the objects. I try not to have overlapping elements on the same layer (and you’ll see why later). For example, the brown rocks and red part of the sun are on one layer. The purple land and the pink part of the sun are on the layer above. I build up my layers until I’ve completed all the basic shapes.
Now that the simple objects have been drawn, it’s time for texture! Since each shape is on its own layer, this allows me to lock the transparent pixels (in Photoshop’s layers palette there is a little checker board beside the word “Lock”). Doing this allows me to paint only where there are already objects. Now I can start using a few brushes I’ve made (in the above image there are two: a scatter brush on the clouds and a gouache brush used on the land) and not worry about keeping inside the lines.
There are times where I don’t want to keep to the solid forms. Sometimes the image calls for texture that just can’t be contained. The “foliage” is on another layer (maybe I’m overly neurotic with my layers, but hey, I do what I want). And again, you can see the rocks as a good example of locking the layer and then painting freely to introduce texture (it’s kind of like using a stencil to contain everything).
And after all the big texture stuff is done I go back in and add the details and small elements (again, another layer…so sue me).
And that’s it! So to recap (because frig this was a long post for me):
- Rough sketch at a very small size
- Tight sketch at a larger size
- Computer time with colour blocking
- Create shapes in flat colour
- Texture it up!
- Write blog post and worry it’s all incoherent
That wasn’t so bad, eh? If I’ve skipped over something that you want discussed further, use that hand ask feature.
Oh and there are still a handful of prints of this left over hurrrrrr.
