Initial Colour and Lighting Experiments and Environments

After going to the North York Moors, I started trying out some environment work. My first go was before I even started looking into lighting and colour, so this is my first try without any practise.



There are some nice bits of style coming through within this piece that I've picked up along the way, such as the smoke, the little flicks of grass in opposing colours, and the texture I used. But as a way of showing colour and lighting, it's a pretty poor example. The shadows and highlights aren't clear, and it's not as if there's anything casting the shadows. The shading seems quite inconsistent and doesn't seem natural.

After doing this initial trial, I decided to take the photos of the York Moors and use them to make thumbnails, colour picking from the photographs and making them into blocks of colour, so I could understand better how light works.


These seem much more believable and natural. The colours work well and the pictures that have more sunshine and therefore a more stark contrast seem much more dramatic. It was great to get a greater understanding of how sunlight effects colour, as well as distance, such as the hills in the first image. The further away it goes, the less saturated the colour gets.

This was a really interesting experiment, and it definitely seemed to help my environment art.



I started with a rather simple sketch of what I imagined the door to the secret garden would look like, with the ivy hanging down. I didn't want to over complicate it and add in too much information at this stage, so I left it quite scruffy and mangled.



So I created this picture from the sketch above. I still wanted to keep it quite simple and not overdo it with the details, but I definitely wanted the robin in it as he's the one that leads Mary to the garden door in the first place. For the ivy, I made a few variations of vines and then layered them up, flipping them, rotating them and recolouring them to make it seem as though there were a lot of layers to the thick ivy covering the door. I made the top layer the brightest, and made the layers darker and darker the further down they go.

I gave the shovel some stark contrast with the bright edges, and made it have a shadow underneath it. I also wanted the light to come from the top left hand corner, almost over the wall, and so I gave the grass a patch of highlight in the bottom right hand corner to show that, as well as the shadow from the shovel indicating the path of the light source.

I made the door blue as I wanted it to stand out under all the green and browns. I did think about perhaps having it red, but it took away from the contrast of the orange from the robin, so he wasn't as noticeable. I liked the blue though, because if it were brown like wood it wouldn't have shown up really against the wall.

So after that outside environment, I wanted to do something inside. I was really inspired by the many fireplaces in the castle in the Moors, and in the book Mary sits at the fireplace with Dickon's sister Martha, who works as a maid in the house. So I wanted to give that a go, and it would be a much more dramatic lighting situation.



Here is the sketch I started with. Very inaccurate, but it definitely helped me to understand where I wanted everything to be placed. It seemed a bit unbalanced, so I decided to move some things around and try to make the composition feel better.



As I knew this picture would require quite a lot more precision, what with things needing to be symmetrical and placed right, I decided to do a black and white flat version first, so my image would turn out looking right at the end.

I added a few extra pieces of furniture and made it look a bit better composed, so it would look nicer once it was finished.



I wanted it to be night time, and the fire to be one of the only light sources in the room, the other being a candle that's lit above it.

I took a lot of inspiration from things I saw in the pictures I took at Castle Howard. The floor, the basket, frames and furniture all came from photos I took. I was really interested with how I could construct an entire picture with little pieces from here and there in the castle, instead of just copying a scene. I was very excited to see how it came out.

It was a huge challenge to take on with this picture. It took me a very long time to get it to look just how I wanted it to. It's got the high contrast I was looking for, but also has little details like the wallpaper and the wicker basket the wood is in, and the picture frames having different layers.

I was so proud of this piece. I can really feel the depth and it has such a lot of detail that the eye is drawn all around the image. It was a brilliant exercise in how lighting effects different surfaces as well, with the shine of the golden hearth to the basket, to the mirror reflecting another light source from the window. I really loved doing this piece and although it was a lot of work, it was worth it in the end I feel.

For this one, I also wanted to test how pattern would work. Such as the flooring, I made it so the floor almost looked flat, like it were running vertically. I wanted to see how the contrast of the shading and the pattern would work, and it does give a very strange but interesting result. I will have to try this out even more later on.

I'm not sure just how these are going to go with my character designs, as they're not as intricate as this and they may look a bit odd, but I will have to see how that works.


I have learned how lighting can effect a scene, and how it can add atmosphere into a piece. I also feel as though I've learned more about environments and how to utilise visual information gathered from other sources, and how they can be sewn together like a patchwork to create a whole new scene.

I'm going to try and take these things on with me as I continue my work and use them in my future illustrations.

Personal Work Style Evolution

Before London Book Fair

So, as I started getting more confident in my work, I started drawing more and more. I decided to do more personal work as I was trying to get a portfolio together to show an art director at London Book Fair[26], and so my final major project work went on the back burner for a while. I also got quite frustrated as the characters weren't looking right, and so I needed a break from them for a while.

I got an iPad Pro[27] and decided to start working on the app Procreate[28] because my parents had an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil[29] and over the Christmas break I had a go with it, and really enjoyed it. I felt it would really help me to draw more often if I had something portable to take around with me that I could draw on. This was possibly the best decision I've ever made, as I feel it has allowed my artistic growth to soar. I can draw digitally pretty much anywhere, and that has really given me a huge boost.



Whenever I feel I need to revamp my style, I always go to self portraits first. I'm not really sure why, but I feel it's probably because I know myself better than anyone else, and I won't ever be offended by something I've drawn of myself.

This portrait was the first thing I was really happy with in a long time. I tried a new style and technique with colouring, adding more texture and stronger line work, and I did really enjoy it. It gave me confidence to get onto other artwork and see what I could push myself with.




After creating something I was really happy with, I really wanted to push it as far as I could, and I also thought about perhaps making a secondary style that would be more editorial. I used so much texture and different pencil brushes to experiment with how colour can be brushed across the surface, taking into account the work of Taryn Knight[19]. I really enjoyed experimenting with this style, and although I still really like it, it definitely helped my other style evolve even further as I started to use more textured brushes.





I also wanted to experiment with flat colour with pattern, like Yelena Bryksenkova[20], so I started trying to mesh the two together, both texture and flat colour with pattern. I really loved creating the background to the second book cover especially, with the layers of clouds and gradient.

My drawing style was taking a life of it's own. The way I drew hair, eyes, noses and hands were all taking on their own style, and I felt more confident with it with every piece. I really love the red blush marks and red noses and ears. It feels like a trademark to my work, and I really do enjoy creating these characters to look like that, so it's almost becoming second nature now to create characters that look like this style.

I now wanted to put that into more practise, and try different types of character.



Here is a drawing of a girl from the forest. This was one of the first images I made where I really loved the result and felt immensely proud of it. I tried to stay loose with the brush strokes and gave myself quite a limited colour palette, and I feel it really worked out well. I started drawing hair and eyebrows with more defined strokes and tried to keep the shading simple.



I tried to keep it even more simple with this piece. It doesn't have a name and isn't based on anything, but I just really felt inspired by ghosts and the Victorian era, so I drew a little girl who was haunted. I used even more defined strokes for her eyebrows and tried making her eyelashes a lighter grey instead of black to see how it would change the image. I feel it makes it much less harsh, which I feel definitely suited the subject matter of this piece.



Again I was just inspired by something completely random, and I loved this colour palette. The teal with the pink I felt really went well together. I didn't have anything in mind when creating this piece, I just started drawing and this was what came out of it.

I love the simplicity of the skeleton and how it doesn't have too much detail, so it really reads well. I also tried adding texture to the dress of the skull lady by using overlapping pencil brush strokes, which I felt worked really well. I kept the tones quite flat and added a spotty background in a dark colour to not distract too far from the characters themselves, but it adds a bit of interest.







London Book Fair was coming up quick, and I really wanted to add some children's picture book pages to it. The first two images were inspired by my niece with my dog and the mischief they get up to together, and the third image is inspired by the idea of a Teddy Bear's Picnic.

I wanted to try out different environments to show first of all that I could do them, but also to test myself and see how well they would come out. I was very happy with how everything looked, and I really enjoyed making some younger looking characters. It was definitely more of a challenge, but one I really wanted to take on. I also tried to add texture and pattern wherever I could to practise those too.



This illustration was something completely different. I wanted to try working inside a silhouette, and see how the limitation would affect the feel of the image. It definitely made getting the flow of the image right much more difficult, but I feel I took on this challenge. I made it so the girl was leaning slightly and there were bushes all curving in towards her, making her the focus of the image. I also added some trees to extend her line at the top, to make the eye bounce around the image better.

I really enjoyed this and wanted to try different characters, but I haven't had time to do that yet. Perhaps in the future it's something to think about.

I also tried a different shading technique on the bushes, having much more flat shading but still adding some texture. I really liked that style, and will try it out again sometime in the future and see how it integrates with my work.


After London Book Fair

So after going to the London Book Fair and speaking to an art director, I was told my style suited older children better and that I should look into more black and white imagery. This scared me, as I had never done black and white before and I wasn't quite sure how I'd approach it. It was completely different to colour, as you're completely relying on the values rather than any hues. I wasn't sure how mixing textures would work either, and so I was quite scared to try it out, but I started trying it.




Here were my initial trials for black and white drawings. I tried both more flat textured hair and then more of a pencil shaded style like I did before, and I found neither were really feeling quite right. I also did find it very hard to find the right values. It was so much more difficult to make people look different, because having just shades of grey was much more limiting than being able to make people wear different colours of the same value.





I then tried some spot illustrations. I started with the homework illustration, and I found I enjoyed it a lot more having just objects to draw. It make finding a style and different a bit easier, as they could be any shade I wanted. things like the pretzels and chocolate bar were nice to try and figure out the values to, and I found it was becoming much more enjoyable.

I decided to draw a house because I wanted to try an environment drawing. Again, the values seemed to be a bit easier to find here. I tried to use lots of different pencil textures and a mixture of outlined and non outlined areas, which I felt really worked well.

Lastly I drew some cake, and I tried stronger line work. I do like it, but I feel perhaps it could've been a bit better achieved without such strong lines for everything. I will probably try and redraw it at some point.








I then tried black and white characters again, taking what I learned from the objects. I wanted to have more texture and less outline, so I decided to shade the hair with a large sponge brush so it had gaps and texture through it, and then I drew over the top with black to add in the hair strands. I really enjoyed doing that, as it had the feel I wanted. I also used different textures for clothing and only drew outlines where objects overlapped each other, and I felt that was really effective as well.





I continued trying out different textures and value combinations, and I now feel much more confident with my black and white work. I now wanted to try the things I'd learned in my black and white work out on my full colour work, such as using the strong lines in conjunction with the flat textures, and see how that looks.





I do feel it's given my work much more of a unique quality. I am really much happier with my work, and although I'm sure it will probably change even more, I'm finally happy with how my work is going and feel it's much more professional than when I started this year. I feel I have a set style and although that may evolve, it's something I can work with and possibly get jobs from, which is a world away from where I was 6 months ago.

Now I need to apply this all to my work for this module and see how it changes my initial designs.

Gesture Drawing Practise

When trying to draw gestures better, I started watching films and animations and then pausing them at interesting pose points. I wanted to try and start to work out how the body moved and how weight was distributed throughout a character, and how this effected the body's pose.






I also started looking at stock photos for different poses, and mostly used SenshiStock[21] from DeviantArt[22], as I have been following her for a while and she always has such varied poses.

I realised I was starting to add way too much detail to such quick sketches, and so I started trying to loosen them up and draw much faster to get more interesting shapes.



The sketches were still a bit too detailed and didn't seem to have the flow I wanted. I then found a series on Youtube[23] that helped me enormously. I really needed some help with getting down to the bare bones of a gesture drawing, and this series really seemed to unlock it in my brain and gave my work so much more life.

The series started with, 'How I Draw ANATOMY #1: Basic Gesture Drawing'[24], which introduced me to a whole new method of drawing gestures. It was quick, simple and completely cleared up all the confusion I had towards anatomy. She explained what gesture drawing was, how to use this technique with stock photos, how to make up your own poses with this technique. She said to use a rectangular flour sack type shape for the body, an oval for the head and triangles for the limbs, to keep it super simple.

She then elaborated in 'How I Draw ANATOMY #2: Line of Action'[25] how to find the line of action, where weight is being distributed and how to create a flow in your characters. This really made it so simple for me, and I couldn't wait to try it out. I used some more films and animations for reference as I tried out these poses.


For this one, I was still finding it quite difficult to stick to basic shapes and find where weight distributed, but I feel I started getting better the further along I got.






These last two pages really show just how practise can help your work come together better. They're worlds away from my original gesture drawings. They have so much more life and flow in them and you can clearly see how weight is distributed onto the floor. I still have a lot to learn and loads more practise to do, but my work seems to be getting much better as a whole.


Doing gesture practise is something that can be quite time consuming and laborious, and it can be quite disheartening to not see any results, but this part of my project just goes to show you can get so much better just by putting in the time and finding something that makes it simpler for you. I'm so happy I feel more confident with gestures, and I feel I can definitely get better work out now I have more of an understanding of gestures.

Initial Character Designing

I started sketching the characters in 'The Secret Garden'[5]. I decided I would start with the main three characters, Mary, Colin and Dickon, and perhaps expand to a wider range of characters later down the line. I think when trying to find my style, it'll make it easier if I focus onto a smaller selection and then broaden my assemblage afterwards.

I started with Mary, and mostly focused on facial design and trying to create a lot of different looking characters depending on her face shape and facial features. I wanted to try this out after looking at my research and seeing how they create the characters for their animations using this technique.







I didn't really understand what type of style I was looking for at the time of drawing these. I had so many different influences that I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I started looking at the work of people such as Taryn Knight[19], Yelena Bryksenkova[20] and of course Julia Sarda[9] who was in my research, and I found it very frustrating. I wanted to find my own personal style, but it was so difficult, especially limiting myself to my university work.



Taryn Knight[19] is a big inspiration for me. I love the way her work flows and her characterisation. Her use of texture and colour is also really inspiring to me.



Her artwork really transports me to another place. I love that about her style, and I wish to replicate that feeling within my work. I love her way of adding depth to her pieces without being too harsh with her shading.



Yelena Bryksenkova[20] has such a unique style and feel to her work. She uses traditional methods to create her stuff, and she uses a lot of flat colours and adds repeat pattern to give the piece some interest. Her characters always have a melancholy about them. I love her work, but it's completely different to what I want to create. She is still a huge influence to me though.

I decided to just keep sketching and trying things out, trying not to worry about making bad sketches or drawings. I think before now I was scared of showing my bad sketches because I don't like to feel vulnerable about them, but I feel my style evolution won't start until I start sketching more and more and showing them to get feedback.




I drew the other two characters I was starting with, and decided to try and create proper characters out of them. I started doing gestural drawings, but that just highlighted my need for gesture practise.






I decided I wanted to try different hairstyles and see how I felt about them, as I still wasn't 100% happy with how my work was looking and I really just wanted to get something digitally painted, so I wanted to try something different.




I tried different hair colours for Mary as hers wasn't explicitly mentioned during the book, and tried a load of different hairstyles for the boys. It felt good to finally have something being done digitally, and I wanted to do more. I decided upon some hairstyles and I started drawing the characters and gave them digital colouring too.

These were drawn after my gesture practise in my next blog post, so they look a lot better anatomically than the previous sketches. My gesture drawing definitely needed some work. I hadn't built up my visual library of poses yet, and so my characters looked both stiff and unrealistic. I drew them mostly them from my head and not from a source, and so that probably wasn't helping either. They didn't seem to have weight to them and they hadn't got the right flow. Hopefully these do look better after the practise.



I really enjoyed drawing the characters after practising with my gesture drawing. I felt they had a much better feel to them, but I did only draw the first clothing I saw when looking into Victorian era children's clothes, so I will definitely need to look into costume later on. For the purposes of these digital paintings however, they will do.







It felt amazing to get some digital illustration done. I was so much happier doing some digital work and it definitely revitalised me. I tried to make it so the different characters had their own colour scheme, so Mary was green, Colin was purple and Dickon was reds and browns. These were to represent their characters. Green was for sickly and bitter Mary, purple was for royal and entitled Colin, and reds and browns were for the earthy and home grown Dickon who loves nature.

I'm not entirely happy with the designs, but they did come out okay I think. They made me realise though that I needed to give my entire portfolio an overhaul, as these images were quite different to any other illustration I'd done before. I definitely needed to give my portfolio a good looking at, so that will need to happen before I spend too much time investing in these characters that I'm not too happy about. I reckon if I do more personal work for my portfolio, it will give me a much needed chance to upgrade my style and evolve my techniques and skills.