Natural Illustration with Digital Painting
Finding Reference: Imagery, Mood Boards, and Color Palettes
A course by Jessica Roux , Illustrator and Author
About the video: Finding Reference: Imagery, Mood Boards, and Color Palettes
Overview
“Before we get to the fun part of the drawing, it’s important to collect reference material first. Here I’ll show you how I find reference imagery and how I like to create an inspiring mood board before getting started. Deciding on a color palette can be a challenge, too! I’ll go over how historical influences can help us decide on what colors to use. ”
In this video lesson Jessica Roux addresses the topic: Finding Reference: Imagery, Mood Boards, and Color Palettes, which is part of the Domestika online course: Natural Illustration with Digital Painting. Transform a botanical pencil sketch into a digital illustration using the storytelling properties of color.
Partial transcription of the video
“Now that we have a clearer idea of what we want to draw, In this lesson, we'll be collecting reference imagery and making a mood board. Collecting reference images is really important if we want our characters and plants to look somewhat realistic. Mood boards can help us find artwork that we'd want our work to have a similar feel to, and they can help us pick a suitable color palette. When I start collecting reference imagery, I try to pull a lot of different poses and angles. That way we can get a sense of anatomy for our animal characters. Seeing how their bodies move in videos is anothe...”
This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.
Course summary for: Natural Illustration with Digital Painting
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Category
Illustration -
Software
Adobe Photoshop -
Areas
Digital Illustration, Digital Painting, Drawing, Naturalistic Illustration, Realistic Drawing, Traditional illustration

Jessica Roux
A course by Jessica Roux
Jessica Roux is an American freelance illustrator and self-described plant and animal enthusiast. She has been drawing and painting since she was a child when her parents would set up easels in her backyard. She also spent a lot of time exploring the woods in North Carolina, which sparked her love of nature at an early age. Jessica went on to study illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design and, after graduating, began working as a freelance illustrator, combining her love of illustration and nature.
Since then, Jessica’s designs have been transformed into everything from prints to stickers and cards, and she has illustrated various books, including one of her own, Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers. Her work has also appeared in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as publications including The New Yorker and Taproot Magazine.
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