Illustration Friday: Tropical

Initial Ideas:

• Tropical Fish
• Tropical Birds
• Hot countries
• Refreshing drinks
• Foliage
• Rainforest
• Jungle
• Cocktails
• Fruit

Reference Imagery

With tropical being such a broad and exciting theme, I explored a number of different options before settling down on one aspect in particular. It was useful to re-discover all of the striking and vibrant colours of tropical elements, and working from secondary photographs helped me to gain an insight into the differences in culture too.

Thumbnails

Initially I wanted to challenge myself by illustrating an underwater scene with an array of beautiful sea creatures. After trying out some rough sketches, I realised that this wasn't really going anywhere, and re-evaluating the theme and gaining some peer feedback, I decided that it was probably a bit of a cliche area to choose. I really enjoyed drawing tropical birds such as parrots and toucans but then again, there were a lot of them that people have already submitted to illustration Friday.

To overcome my indecisiveness in choosing a section of 'tropical' to work in, I researched for tropical animals and began drawing different species of frogs, which I really enjoyed. I quickly decided that I would create an illustration involving a tropical frog.

Process

From last weeks jaffa cake success, I chose to work in photoshop again this week, trying to further build my skills in using the different brushes. As opposed to last week, I paid more attention to gradually building up the layers of the piece by applying basic block colour, and step by step adding the lighter and darker tones with the textures brushes. I did come across a few difficulties because I accidentally lost the brush that I was working with, without realising that I'd switched to pencil mode instead of brush mode, but subsequently this resulted in me discovering some really interesting textures that I used for tree bark!

I think that once I become quite familiar with the whole process of painting with photoshop, I will work more time efficiently, which will benefit me being able to work at a quick pace and produce a larger quantity of work.

Evaluation

As promised, this week I have stepped up from a simple vignette-yay! Already I can see an improvement in my brush skills to where I have applied lighter and darker shades to create a more three-dimensional effect. However, I do feel as if I should have spent a little more time considering the background; I feel like the gradient is a little bit of a cop out to be honest, but I didn't want to over-complicate the image and divert away from the main subject matter.

Overall, my illustration is a substantial reflection of the tropical theme, showing a sense of narrative and well thought out composition. 

My aim for next week, as always is to improve; it might be useful to watch a few tutorials on youtube to do with photoshop and gather some more techniques, as well as looking at a wider range of brushes I can potentially use.