How I work- Idea to Finish

Hi there,

The beauty of art and artists is that there is no right or wrong and each of us have a different way of working

Sharing my process, on how I work.

• Sometimes I have the illustration or the story idea very clear in my head. In such a scenario I first start with the thumbnails/doodling for storytelling and later work on the characters.

• Other times, as I work on characters in my sketchbooks I love them so much that I later work on an illustration for them

Either of the times, it usually all start in my sketchbooks.

Sharing my process for this below illustration, which was a personal project.

The stages are interchangeable. Sometimes I work characters first and then the composition and other times, the composition first and then the characters. 

I first doodle a lot of thumbnails for getting the composition I like. For this one I did not do loads of compositions because in my head I was very clear on what and how I wanted my end illustration to look like.

Scribbling Composition options

Once I am happy with one of them, I work on rearranging the characters in the scene.

My sketches are as scribbly (crappy) and naive as this.

I do a ton of sketches in my sketchbook where I draw the characters from different angles and poses.

Here are few sketches from my sketchbooks.

You can watch my time-lapse video here to see my complete process. I do not scan in the sketch and work over it digitally. I start from scratch digitally, because for me personally, I feel I lose the life of the illustration when I scan and draw over.

Hope this was helpful.

If you have a similar process, I would love to hear. And if you have a process very different from mine, also, I would love to hear.

Have a great lovely week ahead.