Creative Sketchbooks for Illustration Projects

Creative Sketchbooks for Illustration Projects

“All right! we have already reached the end of this course. I hope it has inspired you and that everything you have learned will motivate you to start getting into the habit of keeping a notebook as a tool to make your own illustrations. Next, we will go over the different steps you must follow to develop your project of creating an illustration series with your personal style. Choose the theme you want to represent Choose the subject taking into account your interests, remember that “you will not be able to create anything interesting unless you are interested in something”, a great truth that appears in the book Think like an artist , by Will Gompertz. Try to pick a topic that appeals to you and write a list of things that encompass this topic. In my case, I chose the theme of nature. and in particular that of a character that inspires me a lot like Alexander von Humboldt. Try to write down everything, even things that you had not noticed at first, you can also make short notes of what you see to better describe it. Try to gather as many words as you can to act as image triggers.

Draw, cut and create the textures of the silhouettes inspired by the chosen theme When you have this list and the descriptions, take what you consider most important and draw the figure of each thing until you have several in your notebook. In my case, I made silhouettes of the shapes of nature with India ink and textures with different tools. The purpose of this is to collect artwork with which I will build my illustration. Scan everything you have created When you have all the graphic material in your notebook, it is time to digitize it with the help of the scanner and Photoshop. Once you have the notebook in the scanner, you must open Photoshop, click the "File" window and select the "Import" option, where then you click the "Images from device" option. With these simple steps we will be digitizing from the program with the advantage of editing directly and leaving everything ready to use. Start to compose your illustration Create a new workspace in Photoshop and define the elements you want to use. In order to select the images and convert them into individual elements, we will first give more contrast to our drawing. Select the "Image" window and press the "Adjustments> Levels" option, there we will give it more contrast to make our drawing even darker. When you have the images clean and more defined, press the "Selection" window and select the option "Color range", here you will have to click on the image in the part you want to take (the black area). You will see that it will be selected and in this part you just have to do the classic "Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V" and you will see that each image will be cropped perfectly. When you have everything cut out, it is time to take the silhouettes with which we want to compose our illustration, play with the textures, sizes and shapes. Getting to this point is the most fun because you start to see how little by little the elements interact and begin to make sense. As you will see, the notebook is a great tool to create and collect our graphic resources and ideas, and with the exercises, techniques and tips learned during the course you can start creating your pieces like a great illustrator. Remember to share in the forum both your finished series of illustrations and the steps and experiments with your notebook that have led you to the final result. If you have questions, I'll be here to solve them and give you my feedback as soon as I can. Illustrating is a fascinating activity that arouses our curiosity and desire to tell and show our internal world, begin to explore your illustrated world. I am excited to see your final project! See you soon… Bye! ”

Partial transcription of the video

“Final project. Before closing, I would like us to see a brief summary of everything we have seen in the course. I started by showing you some of the notebook options, its formats, papers and finishes, with the intention that you find the one that works best for you. This helped you start to see the drawing and experimentation in your notebook as a helpful and creative way to create valuable graphic possibilities that you can later incorporate into your illustration projects. I taught you to use the notebook as a tool to create a series of assets that you transformed into graphic pieces to u...”

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Course summary for: Creative Sketchbooks for Illustration Projects

• Level: Beginner
• 99% positive reviews (175)
• 2099 students
• 4 units
• 15 lessons (3h 11m)
• 6 downloads

• Category

  Illustration

• Software

  Adobe Photoshop

• Areas

  Creativity, Digital Illustration, Drawing, Editorial Illustration, Sketchbook, Sketching