The Little Cactus

Meet the little cactus. He’s green and round and although he is prickly (he is a cactus after all!) he is always happy and content and always looks at the bright side of things. He lives in his little corner of a vast desert and indeed he himself is small or little, naive and childlike - as he was created with the smallest audiences of little 2 to 6 year olds in mind. And although I have created my illustrations for this particular competition, I have made them as if creating for children’s publishing.

I do not usually make up new characters in my work, but I must say I have enjoyed the process. First through brainstorming and idea generation to the character development - to not just creating my character’s looks but also his backstory, his content - I found that it was also his personality traits that eventually also informed and inspired his final looks. Despite being the character’s author I found that through every picture I drew of him I was getting to know him a little better myself, which was a very nice and interesting experience.

I have used both traditional and digital media. I started my sketches on paper using pencils and color pencils. After developing my initial sketches, character design, character cards and main illustration I continued using traditional Holbein gouache on watercolor paper. At last I scanned my illustrations and finished them using Procreate (iPad+Apple pencil). I used Inkscape to create the mood board and presentation images. Fonts used in this project are open source Google Fonts: Amatic SC, Nothing You Could Do and Poppins.

Rigth from the beginning I have decided to create a character for The Bright Side theme, I wanted to create a happy, content, calm and childlike, naive character. I started brainstorming things or subject that I intuitively connect with being happy and innocent - from babies, toddlers, puppies, kittens, baby otters to different animated houselhold items or food items I finally arrived at my little cactus idea. I already knew what style and for what kind of audience I would like it to be illustrated for and so I started researching different cacti, desert landscapes, desert flora and color schemes.

Mood Board

My mood board contains different desert landscapes, cacti, a color scheme for the main illustration, also a segment of a song I used to know that also inspired my work.

While working on my initial sketches I have developed the character design. I sketched out different types of cacti, eventually settling on the one I thought would suit my purpose the best. I further developed his face, eyes, expressions to get to the final sketch.

My process always starts with pencils and paper. After I did my initial sketches and settled on the character design I continued drawing character cards and my main illustration - all done on watercolor paper, first with pencil, then with traditional gouache and finally scanning my drawings and finalizing them in Procreate. I tried to give all my character cards and main illustration their own specific color schemes with the common anchor color being the deep green of the cactus.

The character cards are not entirely finished illustrations - but through them I have tried to further develop the character's personality and use them as a little story telling opportunity.

The little cactus lives happily in his little corner of the desert, he admires the beautiful flowers the other cacti have.

One day he awakens to find that a little flower grew on the top of his head too. He couldn`t be happier about his new friend.

Now he feels like he has a new found responsibility for his small friend. Being the caring and loving character that he his, he sets up to get some supplies to take care of his flower in the best manner possible. This illustration also serves as a little background story to the main illustration.

They live happily, without a worry, in the desert, enjoying their new-found friendship.

The main illustration is meant to portray both the little cactus and his flower finding their 'happy place'. The cactus lovingly looks at his flower, setting up a little shower to make his friend happy. The background and the illustration in general is more complex and complete than the character cards.

I attempted to set up a sligthly different color palette for each drawing, unfortunatelly I struggled the most with the colors for the main illustration.

After scanning my drawing, to help my self I have 'blocked-out' the colors in Procreate to overcome my struggles and set up a slightly changed composition, especially in the background. Happy with the changes I made I continued working in Procreate.

I added text to the final illustration to, in a way, continue the story telling aspect of the character cards but also adding a little bit of a bookish feeling to the piece and finally conecting it in a way to the intended media of childrens' publishing. And so here it is - the main illustration for my project:

Hopefully the little cactus and his flower will continue living happily in their content little corner of their world and I might develop their story further in the future.