From sketch to finish

Tackling an illustration brief

First of all, welcome, new subscribers, it’s nice to see you 🌺!

It’s second Monday or September and this month’s theme by Illoguild, the children’s books illustration review group is: How do you tackle an illustration assignment - you can find articles from other Illoguild members, describing their methods of tackling a picture book, a custom illustration or a design project below in my recommended Substacks.

I wanted to talk about an interesting experience I had with a Portuguese charity organisation that approached me recently to provide an illustration for a page in the book of stories they publish every year - proceeds of the book help fund various social and educational programmes for disadvantaged children and the texts, written by children themselves are illustrated by the artists from around the world.

It is important to ask as many questions as possible about the job before accepting it, so clear communication is crucial.

I was first contacted through Instagram messages, which is not the most practical method of communication so the back and forth took several days before we all agreed on what the actual assignment was, language barrier playing an important role in the delay. It is important to ask as many questions as possible about the job before accepting it, so clear communication is crucial. Since the commission was for one simple donated illustration, the slow pace didn’t matter much but for a more complex, paying job that stretches over several months and includes a detailed agreement about fees, deadlines and revisions, lack of clarity can cause unnecessary misunderstanding and delays.

Soon after our chat on Instagram I received an email explaining technical requirements of the illustration and providing me with the text, which I then had to translate from Portuguese with a help of several online translation sites, trying to get as close as possible to the actual meaning. The main theme of the story was water and once I had the key words down I started sketching them as separate icons, focusing my image around a river running towards the sea, a child and a sparrow to create a narrative. Other than capturing the main theme I had all the freedom of interpretation.

Sometimes I will need a photo reference to draw an exact object, an animal or a body pose; following the reference too closely can be tricky from a copyright standpoint so I make sure I only use the photo as a loose guide

I love working digitally but my first sketches are always in pencil - in this case, I used red and blue pencil, no particular reason, I just felt like adding a bit of colour. Sometimes I will need a photo reference to draw an exact object, an animal or a body pose; following the reference too closely can be tricky from a copyright standpoint so I make sure I only use the photo as a loose guide - there are websites with royalty free images however where you can search photos by theme, like https://unsplash.com

My favourite sketch was the one with the girl letting the bird drink from her glass so I decided to compose the scene around her - I used Procreate app on my iPad and sketched the final image in black and white, scaling, moving, trimming certain parts until I was happy with the layout.

Once the layout was set, I rendered the illustration in colour, adding layers and layers of foliage and alternating darker and lighter patches of the background to create depth.

I got a bit carried away while painting the water surface and the result was over polished, unrealistically opaque block of blue that didn’t feel like a live stream - I had to take a step back, remove the opaque blue patch, paint the river bed in full as if it was dried out and then add water image on a separate layer, lowering its opacity so the river bottom could peak through the water as it does in nature.

And here’s the final result: Àgua que corre entre rochas

(Full text in Portuguese is available on this link: https://tinyurl.com/3kkb5etb)

The book is scheduled to be published at the end of the year, I hope I can share more contributing illustrators then.

Until next time,

Happy drawing,

Damjana