When I start my art pieces I typically follow the same steps to reach to the finished piece. Here I will be using one of my Kid Lit illustrations as an example and you can find process pieces per illustration under every section.

1) The Idea

Typically my ideas for an illustration stem from my interests ranging from nature to tea parties. As I start I give myself guidelines or a prompt to better paint a picture in my head. For this piece I knew I wanted a whole spread illustration with a unicorn in a forest for my love of mythical beasts. I then wanted to add kids as I wanted this piece for my Kid Lit illustration examples.

2) Thumbnail

The thought process helps me figure out what I want and then I start with a rough outline on sketcbook. I do not worry about anatomy or canvas sizes as I just try to nail down the poses and feeling of the characters and environment(This could take multiple tries for me to find the one that reads nicely). In this thumbnail I sketched the side profile of a kid on a unicorn and the second page of them on a pond. After the first thumbnail I added notes to what I wanted to see for the final illustration as well as any additional characters I needed to make.

3) Research

Now I know what is needed for my illustrations, I look up references to help me better flesh out the elements for my art piece. I mainly use pinterest and google to find reference photos of the realistic elements so I could translate them to something simpler. I end up doing some studies on the subject as well. For this piece I saw most old unicorn drawings were of slim horses and I wanted the piece to have Irish and Scottish mixing elements so I looked up draft horses to add unicorn elements onto.

4) Sketch

At this point I am sketching out the elements needed for my illustration. I play with poses, anatomy, clothing, and characteristics. I also make notes for myself to what I thought would let each character shine. I later re-sketch my thumbnail onto my digital medium, but now using my fleshed out character designs and make any edits to the poses to what I believe would be better read. Here there is a lot of room for me to play around and create little personalities for everyone and have loose character sheets for me to rely on.

5) Outline

This is the part where I make the final outline for everything. I carefully select the brush best suited for the piece and begin. I play with brush stroke widths and carefully go over the main fleshed out sketches first, then go over the more loose and open to interpretation areas. I like to work in layers and group together the background pieces, the characters, the foreground, and little detail specs. I try not to merge the layers just in case I need to make edits down the line.

6) Color Block

Here is the fun part, as I get to play around with colors and decide the texture. For me it varies per piece as when you see Rainbow Crow compared to Stairway, the strokes are very different. For Unicorn I wanted a painting feeling so I used a very textured brush that was similar to a calligraphy brush but more loose.

7) Shading

After the colors come the shading process I use blend mode layers to create the effects of shading, lights, shadows, and other color corrections. Here you can see a more contrasted piece as I play with values.

8) Final Touches

Here I make any final adjustments of moving characters, changing outline colors, or adding any additional pieces to tie the piece together. Since this is an illustration example for my portfolio I would also place my signature stamp on the final piece, completing it.

My Process