Whimsical Illustrations with Watercolor

Creative techniques for children's illustration

“To finish, I invite you to develop your own project. The final project will be to generate an illustration of a personal and dreamlike nature. I recommend that you look for a comfortable place to work before starting. Take your time and go step by step developing the project. Develop a simple idea, do not look for something too complex or full of meaning. Simpler is often better. I recommend working with two or three colors at most, that will help you harmonize better. Look for very personal references, things that have been with you for a long time, photos that you have taken, a family photo or elements that remind you of your childhood. In this way you will achieve a unique result full of identity. Before we say goodbye, we are going to review the key phases of the project. It would be great if you showed me a picture of each phase and added a brief explanation about what you have done in each one. References Find elements (images, poems, objects, old photos ...) and collect them in the place you prefer to have them close.

Sketch After calmly observing these elements, begin to sketch freely in your notebook or notebook. From those sketches and mixture of elements, make the final sketch of your dream illustration. Transfer When you have your drawing ready, transfer it to watercolor paper as I taught you in Unit 3. Color palette Before starting to paint, define the color palette that you will use in your illustration. I have used some external references to help me choose the range of colors to use in my project. Plot Outline your drawing on the watercolor paper with a thin line. When it dries, remove the graphite as we saw in Unit 4. First layers Apply the first coats of color to lay the color foundations for your artwork. Remember the advice I gave you in Unit 4: go painting in different areas of your illustration, this will allow you to continue working while other areas dry. Second coats and final coats When the first layers dry, move on to the midtones, shadows, and areas with higher color saturation. Final touches Finally, work with care on the small details of your illustration. Remember how we did it in Unit 4 using polychromes and gouache. You already have it! Digitization You have already finished your illustration, now you only have to scan it and compose it in Photoshop, as we saw in Unit 5, to finish your project. Now share your final project with all of us by clicking on "Create your project". Remember to share both the final result of your illustration and the steps that have led you to it. I also want to invite you to actively participate in the forum, both sharing your progress and giving advice and trying to help the rest of the community. It is sure to be very enriching for everyone! See you on the forum! ”

Partial transcription of the video

“Final project We have finished this Domestika course, but before saying goodbye we will review what we have seen. At the beginning I showed you the materials that we would use, I showed you my inspiration process and finally we made our first drawings. Then we made the sketch of our illustration, we saw how to transfer it to watercolor paper and I taught you some techniques to achieve different effects when painting in watercolor. We paint the first layers focusing on the lightest colors to define the bases of our image. Next we painted the second layer, where we made some color adjustments...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Whimsical Illustrations with Watercolor

• Level: Beginner
• 98% positive reviews (56)
• 1104 students
• 5 units
• 17 lessons (2h 37m)
• 6 downloads

• Category

  Illustration

• Software

  Adobe Photoshop

• Areas

  Children's Illustration, Drawing, Editorial Illustration, Narrative, Traditional illustration, Watercolor Painting