Illustration Friday: Soar

Initial Ideas

• Eagles
• Kites
• Birds
• Flying
• Sky diving
• Doing well (metaphorically)
• High up
• Falling 
• Parachute
• Paraglide

Thumbnails

The thing that first came to mind when I thought of 'soar' was an eagle, because at my secondary school the eagle was the school emblem and every year the headmistress used to do a speech how she wanted us all to 'soar like eagles' (lol)

As the eagle is a rather majestic bird, I wanted it to be the centrepiece of my image, and I challenged myself to use a more geometric approach when using vectors.

Reference Imagery

I found it useful to work from reference as it would have been difficult to find an eagle and take a picture of one...but again I wanted to make sure that I didn't trace the image straight out, so I drew it out first instead.

Process

I used adobe illustrator to construct the image, being careful when using layers to make the process less complicated. One useful thing was that I learnt how to use the gradient tool so that my image didn't look as flat, and the feathers of the eagle looked more interesting with a greater sense of dimension. To save time in an attempt to become more efficient, I copied and vertically flipped the eagle's wing along with making a few adjustments to the feather as opposed to constructing a new one from scratch. This made it a lot easier in terms of proportion. I fiddled around a little with colour and composition, as I wanted to show a sense of scale and space between the eagle and the sky

Evaluation

I am pleased with the outcome of the image and what I have achieved with using the gradient tool for the first time. It is simplistic yet effective and uses good proportion within the space of the canvas. I had the most difficulty with the initial part of actually drawing the eagle, as I haven't had an awful lot of practice drawing birds, but taking that into consideration I have made progression. I know I keep saying this but my aim for the next illustration Friday is to make a more complex image, rather than just a vignette. It is helping to improve my drawing skills but it is not helping me to develop my illustration skills to a high enough complexity. If I were to add more information, depth and narrative into the image then I believe I would gain a lot more personal development, in correlation with my images.