Illustration Development

I found recently that I haven't been able to progress with the illustrations for my novel and I wasn't sure why. So I began by thinking about the drawing process and whether I enjoyed it. I spent a long time trying to get to grips with the above piece, but after reflection I don't think it's very strong. This is a mixture of the composition not being quite right, but I also wasn't really drawn to the colours used. I don't feel it's a good representation of my work at all. I feel as though I need to go in and add in lots of details still, which I don't really want to do at this point. So, I thought it was time to try a different approach.

I don't have any experience drawing environments/architecture, so I'm not really surprised that this has been difficult for me to navigate so far.

I came across Angela Hao when searching for some inspiration on Pinterest.. https://www.instagram.com/angelahao_art/?hl=en 

I was immediately drawn to the character she is able to give to buildings with all the details and colours. Many of her pieces feature a building on a plain white background, so I thought that would be a good place to start.

Then I found a new reference image for my drawing. I struggled with the complex perspectives in the first iteration, so I thought it was best to simplify.

Although this is very basic so far, I'm already feeling much more confident about this way of working. I really like to work digitally, but I love dry scratchy ink textures - which were missing from the first piece. Something I really love about drawing, is adding in small details that give a character (or building) a sense of style/identity. In this case, it's the plants and starry details of the awning. 

 Stripping the image right back also let me focus on the tonal values in the piece. I wanted it to work as both a monochromatic piece and a full colour illustration, so that I can be flexible later down the line when it comes to production. I also feel that this aligns more with my established visual identity (although I don't think that's necessarily important).

I then went on to experiment with creating tonal values with screen tones. As I will hopefully be selling work at Printed Bound in April, I was toying with the idea of making this into a set of screen prints. I wanted to challenge myself to see whether this could be done as a single layer screen print, or whether I'd need two layers.

Then finally, I had a try at adding colour to the piece. I'm really happy with how this came out. Although the entire scene doesn't depict the street view that I initially envisioned, I'm not entirely sure that matters. Throughout this project, I have been testing to see how much information I can remove from a page (or illustration) before it stops making sense. So hopefully, in the context of my book, this will still work as the first illustration.