Dancing Women: Step-By-Step

Personally, I've always been interested in blog entries and articles in which artists talk about their process of creating an illustration, logo or design. So, in an effort to give back, I thought I'd take some time, look at a recent illustration and explain a little about how I approach an illustration assignment.

For this project, my client is an online company who will soon be launching a website which sells hand-made jewelry. (Note: I'll include a link to the site, and reveal its name, once the site has gone live, but for now will keep things anonymous, so as not to create undo pressure on the client.) The client had asked for an illustration that could go on the website's landing page depicting a young, fashionable female wearing jewelry. Stylistically, the client was also fond of the "Breezy" illustration I had created for Illustration Friday last year.

So, with these two things in mind, I set about the first step of creating an illustration...

Step 1: Thumbnails
(With all the images in this entry, please click on them to see them larger and in more detail.)

In all honesty, I tend to not be big on thumbnails and roughs. But, they do have their roll, and for this illustration, I felt it was important that I do some initial sketches to try to get the right sense of motion. The central figure in the above scan (if you can make sense of it) was the one that I felt finally hit the mark.

Step 2: Hand Drawing

Using the thumbnail from Step 1 as my guide, I created this illustration. At this point, it still needed some refining, but I sent this to the client for an initial review and to make sure I was on the right track.

Except for a few minor changes, the client approved of this direction overall. So, I created a revised version that addressed the client's feedback as well as a couple problems I had with the drawing. This included making the foreground hand less man-ish, changing her hair so that more of the face was revealed, and making the dress smoother and less frumpy.


After making those revisions, the next step was to scan the illustration, and bring it into Illustrator.

Step 3: Tracing the Hand Drawing
Once I scan my hand-drawn sketch, there are actually several different ways that I approach refining and coloring it based on the eventual look that I want. For some drawings, such as my "Intricate" drawing, I actually bring the illustration into Photoshop and do most of the refining and coloring there. But, for this instance, I decided to work exclusively in Illustrator, to help get the lighter and cleaner look I wanted.

Once scanned and placed in Illustrator, the first step was to trace my sketch. To do so, I place the sketch on one layer, lock it, and work on a second layer with the Pen Tool. Since I didn't want the final illustration to feature many contour outlines, instead of tracing the lines themselves, I focused on tracing what would eventually be individual areas of color.

Also, when tracing my line work, it was important to start with the parts of the drawing which would be in the background, and work my way to the foreground. This helps with keeping things ordered correctly at later stages of my work.

Finally, while tracing, I knew that I'd want to deal with the jewelry separately, and in more detail, so I placed it on a third layer.

At the end of tracing my illustration, I hide the sketch layer, and was left with this...


Sort of a mess, no? Well, I'll fix that quickly.

Step 4: Applying Color

Luckily, in this instance, the client had not one but two defined color palettes to work from. This took away a lot of the heavy lifting for choosing colors for this illustration, and allowed me to focus on applying those colors instead.

Taking each individual color field, and applying a color from the clients palette to it quickly got me to here:



At this point, you can see that I'm not focusing much on detail, just getting the broad color choices down. One of the advantages of working in Illustrator is how easily you can switch colors, if things aren't working (as you'll see shortly). Also, you'll noticed that I'm still not worrying about the jewelry, which I plan on addressing last.

Step 5: Refine and Add Detail
With some basic color choices made, I went back and began making tweaks to the illustration. I didn't like the grey in the shirt, so I changed that to a light blue; and then I began adding gradients to my illustration to give the clothes and hair more form and texture.



Also, you see that I added more detail to the eyes, and face. But still no jewelry... yet.

Step 6: Final Details
Read: Add the jewelry

Early on in the sketching process, to help makes sure that the illustration would reflect the style of jewelry sold on the clients site, I had the client forward on some photos of typical pieces. Then, in creating jewelry for the drawing, I tried me best to duplicate what I saw in the photos.



This process, quite possibly, was similar to creating actual jewelry itself, since I had to create a number of small beads (each composed of layers of gradients) and then "string" them together to create each necklace, earring or bracelet. After adding the jewelry, I realized that the entire illustration was looking too cold, so I switched the background to a warm orange to help give it more life.

Step 7: Review and Revision
Now that I felt like this illustration was presentable and on the homestretch to completion, it was time to let the client review it again. Overall, the client was pleased with how it looked, but had a couple minor tweaks she requested. First, the client was worried that the gradients on the dress made it look too sheer. And, second, she felt that way I had cropped the head was odd and made the image look cut off. Both were fair criticisms, so I set about making changes.

With the top of the head added, and with the dress color switched, I felt the drawing was actually much improved, but the background still wasn't quite working for me. So, I experimented with some different shapes until I found a shape an color I felt help make it more dynamic.

Which, brought me to the final version:



Anyhow, I hope that some of you found this interesting. As I said earlier, there are a number of different ways I approach my drawing, so this is by no means my definitive technique. In fact, I'd argue that creating illustrations is a perpetual learning process and -with each illustration I create- I discover a new technique, style or possibility. That's actually one of the things that makes illustration so interesting and exciting.

Thanks for taking the time to read along! Let me know if you have any questions or comments. It would be great to hear from you.