digital illustration juliedillon

7/31/2019 Digital Illustration Juliedillon

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Illustration Walkthrough

Julie Dillon

www.juliedillonart.comIn this tutorial, Im going to take you step-by-step through my creation of my illustration Newborn. I wrote this in 2010 as

a pitch for a project that didnt take off, so I figured I should share it rather than let it sit idle on my hard drive.


2/17

The given theme was Newborn, and my original idea was to draw a girl who found and was caring for a

newborn gryphon hatchling. I wasnt sure what else I wanted to do with that idea yet, so I just started sketching.

At first, I wanted to show the moment when the hatchling was born. I thought it would make for a cute,

heartwarming scene. The composition in this sketch is a simple pyramidal shape, with the figure and box front

and center, and minimal background details. The scene is cropped closely around the girl with her egg. There

isnt a lot of movement in the scene, because the focus is more on her happy emotional reaction rather than any

action or drama.


3/17

While I liked the previous sketch, I decided I wanted to try a different approach. I wanted to play up the feeling

that the girl was protecting the newborn gryphon from some lurking danger. In this next scene, the girl has

bundled up the gryphon and is running away from her home with it to keep it safe from pursuers. The camera

angle is lower to the ground, focusing on the girl as she flees. The curve of the sheet-rope leading down from

window shows us that shes climbed out the window. I took a few liberties with the perspective and angles of

the buildings, giving the surroundings a slightly exaggerated look to perhaps enhance the feeling that the girl is

overwhelmed and scared but this unfamiliar situation. The low angle also helps make the otherwise normal

house seem slightly larger and potentially more mencacing.

The focus of the illustration is on the girl. The eye moves in a curve from the open window, down the rope and

to the girl, directing the viewer straight to the focal point and also showing the path that shes taken as she runs.

Without that rope (or a ladder or some other means of escape) hanging from the window, it might look like

shes just running through someone elses backyard.

Compositionally, I really liked this draft. I liked the circular movement created by the girl and the building.

Narratively, however, I was having difficulty making it make sense. Who is she running from? Why is she

scared? I thought to put some lurking men silhouetted in her room and in the bushes as though they were

looking for her, but it wasnt reading very well, and I had trouble making the nature of the danger clear based on

the image alone. If it were paired with written text, I could use writing to explain her situation, but I wanted to

tell the story with a single image alone. In this sketch, I was worried that it might look like she was kidnapping


4/17

the baby gryphon rather than trying to protect it, and thats not what I was going for. It had plenty of energy,

but was less clear whats going on.

I tried a third approach. This time, the girl is hiding in her room, protecting the hatchling from very obvious and

present intruders. Instead of human enemies, shadowy fantasy monsters creep in the window. This changed the

narrative, suggesting that maybe in taking home the egg, the girl unwittingly has invited a darker fantasy realm

into her otherwise normal life. Theres a sense of danger and tension: Will the girl be discovered? Will she be

able to escape?

The main thrust of the composition is the strong diagonal sweep created by the creature coming in from the

window and pointing down at the box with the eggshell. A secondary spiral sweep moves our eye from the top

left monster down to the girl and the gryphon, helping bring our focus over to the girls scared face. When you

first glance at the piece, you are drawn to the monster picking at the egg in the box, and afterwards you notice

the girl with the hatchling hiding behind the bed. You can quickly read that the girl is trying to hide her hatchling

from these monsters who have an obvious interest in finding them.

I wanted the creatures to look vaguely birdlike, like evil, shadowy versions of the gryphon hatchling. Scary, but

not too terrifying: this is a dark fairy tale scene, not an outright horror scene.


5/17

I want the perspective to be a little exaggerated to enhance the otherworldly

nightmarish feel of the scene, but I still referenced a perspective grid to makesure the major lines of the architectural elements were making sense.

Next I worked on developing

the sketch further. Rather

than focusing too much on

details, I focused on defining

the general areas of light and

dark. There are two main light

sources in this scene: the

main source from the

moonlight coming in through

the window, and soft radiant

light from the glowing

gryphon himself (I like the

idea that he glows, thus

making it even harder to hide

him from prying eyes). I dont

want the entire scene evenly

lit; I just want to use the light

to help direct the eye to the

important areas of the scene,

rather than overwhelm with

the scene with detail. Areas

of high contrast will draw the

eyes attention, so we want

to balance the intensity of

light and shadow to help

direct the eye around the

page to help tell the story.

The highest areas of contrast

between light and dark are 1)

on the monster and egg and

2) on the girl and hatchling,

both of which are my focal

areas. Ill be painting on top

of this sketch later, so it

doesnt need to be

completely tightly rendered at

this stage.


6/17

Now I was ready to start adding color. The first thing to do was lay down my basic areas of color. As with the

grayscale sketch, I didnt want to focus on details at this stage just yet. I just wanted to block in my main areas of

color and further define my light and dark areas. For my color theme, I chose to start with a scene dominated

mostly with blue-green. The girls room is probably very bright and colorful in the day, but in the dim moonlight,

whatever warm colors are in the scene will be muted and tinged with blue, and therefore I dont want to stray

too far from the green-blue-purple range except in focal areas (ie, the girl and gryphon). If I scatter bright warm

colors throughout the piece, the lighting will feel more like daylight than moonlight.

I created a new layer on

top of the grayscale

sketch, and set the

layers properties to

Overlay. This allowed

me to tint the sketch

without losing any of

the detail. I filled mostof the scene with blue-

greens, with yellow on

the gryphon and box,

and red on the monster

eyes, flooring and bed

sheets. The color is still

pretty washed out with

just the overlay layer, so

Ill need to add another

color adjustment layer

on the next step. The

Overlay layer just helps

to tint the sketch and

keep it from looking too

dark and muddy on the

next step.

We also get a rough feel

for how the colors will

look in the scene, so wecan adjust the color

scheme if needed with

little effort.


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Next, I added another layer

on top of the overlay layer,

and set the layer properties

to Multiply. As before, I

just lightly washed areas ofcolor over the scene: in this

case, blues over most of

the image, with yellow on

the gryphon, red on the

sheets and monster eyes,

and muted brown on the

floor.

This multiply layer helps

darken all the washed out

white areas, and make the

colors richer. However,

without the overlay layer

underneath it, it would look

muddy and ashen. With the

overlay layer and multiply

layer both tinting the

sketch, we get a nice rich

underpainting with our

major color areas blocked

in. From here we can begin

painting.


8/17

You want the colors in your illustration to look like they all exist

within the same environment, and often that means toning them

down or shifting the hue. Remember to save your areas of highest contrast and saturation for the focal points,

so you can control exactly where you want the viewer to look.

Next, I created a new layer on

top of all the others (layer

properties just set to normal),

and began to paint. I used a

simple circular brush in

Photoshop, opacity and flow

both set to 100%. Most of my

main color and value work was

already done, its just a matter

of rendering details.

Note about Local vs Perceived

color: In the full light of day,

the bedspread might be

pink/red, the floor a warm

brown hardwood, and the walls

lilac. However, in the soft blue

moonlight, the actual perceived

the colors as we see them in

the scene will be very muted

and more bluish in tone. The

only true bright reds are the

eyes of the creatures, because

they are glowing and emitting

their own light. All the other

reds or browns in the scene

(the bedspread, the flooring,

the cardboard, etc) are very

muted. The color of an object

will be affected by quality of

light that illuminates it.


9/17

Here I started experimenting with

the color and composition a little.

Sometimes this leads to

interesting results, andsometimes you start going off on

the wrong track, so always keep

copies of earlier drafts that you

can refer back to. I liked the

purples and reds, but overall it

was looking too dingy to be a

young girls room, unless she lives

in an attic.

I started thinking about what the

girls room should look like, and

what kind of items would be

found there. I decided I wanted to

show that the girls life has been

revolving around this egg that

shes found and brought back to

her home. She put it in a box and

wrapped it in blankets, drew

pictures of the egg and its

possible inhabitants as she waitedfor it to hatch, and made

preparations to care for it when it

did finally hatch. Where she got

the egg and where it came from

are left for the viewer to ponder.


10/17

illustration that clearly defined every object in her room , then this would be the path for me to continue taking.

There definitely would be a time and place for that sort of illustration; it can be used to great effect. However, in

this case, my goal when I started out was to create a relatively realistic atmosphere and to show the threat of

danger the girl faced, and this current draft is pulling away from that. By lighting and rendering everything

equally instead of applying detail and contrast only in focal points, it starts to take away the sense of movement

and cohesiveness. It was time for me to make some tough decisions about where I wanted to take this piece. I

needed to decide if I wanted a descriptive illustration, or an illustration that conveyed a mood and atmosphere.

Unfortunately, in adding details I

ended up going completely

overboard. I got too caught up

rendering little details all over

the room and stopped paying

attention to the overall image.

Thats something that can

happen when you zoom in on

your picture to work, and dont

zoom out often enough to check

your composition. Notice that in

this draft Ive lost that initial

diagonal thrust from the window

down to the eggshell that the

original sketch had. Its too

evenly lit, the values are

scattered all over the place, and

the scene is starting to lose its

depth and flatten out.

The scene is more descriptive

than atmospheric; it looks like

several smaller vignettes all

patched together rather than

one cohesive environment. I

liked the storytelling aspect of

the added details, and if my

intention was to create an


11/17

I went back and looked at

my original sketch, and after

comparing it to my current

draft, I took a huge step

back. I reestablished thediagonal light coming

through the window, and

faded out some of the areas

that were not focal points.

I can still keep a lot of the

details from the previous

draft, but they need to all

look like they sit within the

lighting of the space.Although there is always a

temptation to render every

item in a scene, not

everything is going to be

evenly lit; items in shadow

will have less contrast than

items being hit by the light

sources.


12/17

I redesigned and repositioned

the main monster a little. I

wanted to exaggerate the

shadow he cast upon the bed

and the floor, to increase thesense that he is large and

ominous.

I also added more subtle reds in

the bottom of the image to give

some movement and contrast

from the blue-green upper

portion to the warmer colors

surrounding the girl and her

gryphon.

Notice that although the

gryphons egg is lit up, it is not

a light source; the is moonlight

illuminating its glossy surface

and making it glow slightly.


13/17

I experimented a little

more with the

composition and tried out

having only the one main

visible monster. The

monsters face is in

shadow, and a separate

monster tail cut across

the floor around the egg

hinting that there are

more creatures in the

room. I like the

spookiness, but I think its

a step too far: now its a

little too moody and

atmospheric.


14/17

Here is my final draft. Ive

combined elements that I liked

from other drafts, andpolished it up. Small details

are present, but they dont

overwhelm or clutter the

scene. The scene has some

hazy atmospheric elements,

but its still clearly a young

girls bedroom. There are a

few stuffed toys and drawings

lying around, but they do not

dominate the piece or distractthe viewer too much from the

main areas of focus. The

monster is cloaked in shadow

and helps form a strong

diagonal line. The girl clutches

her new gryphon friend ,

wrapping him in blankets and

hiding him from view. The

viewer is left to wonder what

happens afterwards, and

hopefully will spend time

looking at it and thinking

about the larger story that I

hint at in the finished piece.


15/17

Here Ill take a moment and go over painting the girl in detail.

Ive laid in the basic areas of color on

top of the BW sketch in an Overlay

layer. I broadly brushed in muted

green, then added yellow over the

gryphon and red on the drapery

elements. By itself, the overlay layer

is very washed out.

To bring out the color more, I put a

Multiply layer on top of the washed out

overlay layer, and paint light yellow

over the gryphon. This intensifies anddarkens the color so it isnt as washed

out. Notice that since the gryphon is

emitting light, Im letting the yellow

flood from the gryphon onto the girls

face to show that his light is reflecting

onto her.


16/17

Now Im starting in on the more careful

rendering. Ive started detailing the

faces and drapery. I hadnt decided fully

on the specifics of pose yet, so thats

left pretty sketchy for the time being.

The girls cheek is still strongly lit by the

glow from the gryphon, while the other

side of her face is in blue-green

shadow. To further enhance the feeling

that the gryphon is glowing, Ive added

some glowing patches on the bed sheet

above him to show that the light is

shining through the fabric.

Here I realized that the gryphon was just

too bright, so I toned him down quite a

lot as I retouched the composition. Ive

reworked the girls clothes and the

shape of the drapery surrounding her,

and worked on her face a little more.


17/17

Now Im working some warmth back into the

scene, and making the gryphon glow a little

more. Right now, the light shining on the

girls face feels more like reflected light: soft

and gentle instead of glaring. Notice that her

clothes and bed sheets all read as being

pinkish, despite it being very muted. As I

mentioned earlier in this chapter, the pale

light of the scene will fade cool off the areas

of warm colors.

Finally, I put more yellow light on the girl,

drapery and bedpost, to make it look more

like the gryphon was emitting light. I didnt

want to go too overboard, though; it doesnt

take much to make him stand out, so I want

only enough to make him look like a light

source, not a spotlight.

digital illustration juliedillon

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