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Illustration Walkthrough
Julie Dillon
www.juliedillonart.comIn this tutorial, Im going to take you step-by-step through my creation of my illustration Newborn. I wrote this in 2010 as
a pitch for a project that didnt take off, so I figured I should share it rather than let it sit idle on my hard drive.
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The given theme was Newborn, and my original idea was to draw a girl who found and was caring for a
newborn gryphon hatchling. I wasnt sure what else I wanted to do with that idea yet, so I just started sketching.
At first, I wanted to show the moment when the hatchling was born. I thought it would make for a cute,
heartwarming scene. The composition in this sketch is a simple pyramidal shape, with the figure and box front
and center, and minimal background details. The scene is cropped closely around the girl with her egg. There
isnt a lot of movement in the scene, because the focus is more on her happy emotional reaction rather than any
action or drama.
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While I liked the previous sketch, I decided I wanted to try a different approach. I wanted to play up the feeling
that the girl was protecting the newborn gryphon from some lurking danger. In this next scene, the girl has
bundled up the gryphon and is running away from her home with it to keep it safe from pursuers. The camera
angle is lower to the ground, focusing on the girl as she flees. The curve of the sheet-rope leading down from
window shows us that shes climbed out the window. I took a few liberties with the perspective and angles of
the buildings, giving the surroundings a slightly exaggerated look to perhaps enhance the feeling that the girl is
overwhelmed and scared but this unfamiliar situation. The low angle also helps make the otherwise normal
house seem slightly larger and potentially more mencacing.
The focus of the illustration is on the girl. The eye moves in a curve from the open window, down the rope and
to the girl, directing the viewer straight to the focal point and also showing the path that shes taken as she runs.
Without that rope (or a ladder or some other means of escape) hanging from the window, it might look like
shes just running through someone elses backyard.
Compositionally, I really liked this draft. I liked the circular movement created by the girl and the building.
Narratively, however, I was having difficulty making it make sense. Who is she running from? Why is she
scared? I thought to put some lurking men silhouetted in her room and in the bushes as though they were
looking for her, but it wasnt reading very well, and I had trouble making the nature of the danger clear based on
the image alone. If it were paired with written text, I could use writing to explain her situation, but I wanted to
tell the story with a single image alone. In this sketch, I was worried that it might look like she was kidnapping
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the baby gryphon rather than trying to protect it, and thats not what I was going for. It had plenty of energy,
but was less clear whats going on.
I tried a third approach. This time, the girl is hiding in her room, protecting the hatchling from very obvious and
present intruders. Instead of human enemies, shadowy fantasy monsters creep in the window. This changed the
narrative, suggesting that maybe in taking home the egg, the girl unwittingly has invited a darker fantasy realm
into her otherwise normal life. Theres a sense of danger and tension: Will the girl be discovered? Will she be
able to escape?
The main thrust of the composition is the strong diagonal sweep created by the creature coming in from the
window and pointing down at the box with the eggshell. A secondary spiral sweep moves our eye from the top
left monster down to the girl and the gryphon, helping bring our focus over to the girls scared face. When you
first glance at the piece, you are drawn to the monster picking at the egg in the box, and afterwards you notice
the girl with the hatchling hiding behind the bed. You can quickly read that the girl is trying to hide her hatchling
from these monsters who have an obvious interest in finding them.
I wanted the creatures to look vaguely birdlike, like evil, shadowy versions of the gryphon hatchling. Scary, but
not too terrifying: this is a dark fairy tale scene, not an outright horror scene.
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I want the perspective to be a little exaggerated to enhance the otherworldly
nightmarish feel of the scene, but I still referenced a perspective grid to makesure the major lines of the architectural elements were making sense.
Next I worked on developing
the sketch further. Rather
than focusing too much on
details, I focused on defining
the general areas of light and
dark. There are two main light
sources in this scene: the
main source from the
moonlight coming in through
the window, and soft radiant
light from the glowing
gryphon himself (I like the
idea that he glows, thus
making it even harder to hide
him from prying eyes). I dont
want the entire scene evenly
lit; I just want to use the light
to help direct the eye to the
important areas of the scene,
rather than overwhelm with
the scene with detail. Areas
of high contrast will draw the
eyes attention, so we want
to balance the intensity of
light and shadow to help
direct the eye around the
page to help tell the story.
The highest areas of contrast
between light and dark are 1)
on the monster and egg and
2) on the girl and hatchling,
both of which are my focal
areas. Ill be painting on top
of this sketch later, so it
doesnt need to be
completely tightly rendered at
this stage.
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Now I was ready to start adding color. The first thing to do was lay down my basic areas of color. As with the
grayscale sketch, I didnt want to focus on details at this stage just yet. I just wanted to block in my main areas of
color and further define my light and dark areas. For my color theme, I chose to start with a scene dominated
mostly with blue-green. The girls room is probably very bright and colorful in the day, but in the dim moonlight,
whatever warm colors are in the scene will be muted and tinged with blue, and therefore I dont want to stray
too far from the green-blue-purple range except in focal areas (ie, the girl and gryphon). If I scatter bright warm
colors throughout the piece, the lighting will feel more like daylight than moonlight.
I created a new layer on
top of the grayscale
sketch, and set the
layers properties to
Overlay. This allowed
me to tint the sketch
without losing any of
the detail. I filled mostof the scene with blue-
greens, with yellow on
the gryphon and box,
and red on the monster
eyes, flooring and bed
sheets. The color is still
pretty washed out with
just the overlay layer, so
Ill need to add another
color adjustment layer
on the next step. The
Overlay layer just helps
to tint the sketch and
keep it from looking too
dark and muddy on the
next step.
We also get a rough feel
for how the colors will
look in the scene, so wecan adjust the color
scheme if needed with
little effort.
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Next, I added another layer
on top of the overlay layer,
and set the layer properties
to Multiply. As before, I
just lightly washed areas ofcolor over the scene: in this
case, blues over most of
the image, with yellow on
the gryphon, red on the
sheets and monster eyes,
and muted brown on the
floor.
This multiply layer helps
darken all the washed out
white areas, and make the
colors richer. However,
without the overlay layer
underneath it, it would look
muddy and ashen. With the
overlay layer and multiply
layer both tinting the
sketch, we get a nice rich
underpainting with our
major color areas blocked
in. From here we can begin
painting.
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You want the colors in your illustration to look like they all exist
within the same environment, and often that means toning them
down or shifting the hue. Remember to save your areas of highest contrast and saturation for the focal points,
so you can control exactly where you want the viewer to look.
Next, I created a new layer on
top of all the others (layer
properties just set to normal),
and began to paint. I used a
simple circular brush in
Photoshop, opacity and flow
both set to 100%. Most of my
main color and value work was
already done, its just a matter
of rendering details.
Note about Local vs Perceived
color: In the full light of day,
the bedspread might be
pink/red, the floor a warm
brown hardwood, and the walls
lilac. However, in the soft blue
moonlight, the actual perceived
the colors as we see them in
the scene will be very muted
and more bluish in tone. The
only true bright reds are the
eyes of the creatures, because
they are glowing and emitting
their own light. All the other
reds or browns in the scene
(the bedspread, the flooring,
the cardboard, etc) are very
muted. The color of an object
will be affected by quality of
light that illuminates it.
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Here I started experimenting with
the color and composition a little.
Sometimes this leads to
interesting results, andsometimes you start going off on
the wrong track, so always keep
copies of earlier drafts that you
can refer back to. I liked the
purples and reds, but overall it
was looking too dingy to be a
young girls room, unless she lives
in an attic.
I started thinking about what the
girls room should look like, and
what kind of items would be
found there. I decided I wanted to
show that the girls life has been
revolving around this egg that
shes found and brought back to
her home. She put it in a box and
wrapped it in blankets, drew
pictures of the egg and its
possible inhabitants as she waitedfor it to hatch, and made
preparations to care for it when it
did finally hatch. Where she got
the egg and where it came from
are left for the viewer to ponder.
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illustration that clearly defined every object in her room , then this would be the path for me to continue taking.
There definitely would be a time and place for that sort of illustration; it can be used to great effect. However, in
this case, my goal when I started out was to create a relatively realistic atmosphere and to show the threat of
danger the girl faced, and this current draft is pulling away from that. By lighting and rendering everything
equally instead of applying detail and contrast only in focal points, it starts to take away the sense of movement
and cohesiveness. It was time for me to make some tough decisions about where I wanted to take this piece. I
needed to decide if I wanted a descriptive illustration, or an illustration that conveyed a mood and atmosphere.
Unfortunately, in adding details I
ended up going completely
overboard. I got too caught up
rendering little details all over
the room and stopped paying
attention to the overall image.
Thats something that can
happen when you zoom in on
your picture to work, and dont
zoom out often enough to check
your composition. Notice that in
this draft Ive lost that initial
diagonal thrust from the window
down to the eggshell that the
original sketch had. Its too
evenly lit, the values are
scattered all over the place, and
the scene is starting to lose its
depth and flatten out.
The scene is more descriptive
than atmospheric; it looks like
several smaller vignettes all
patched together rather than
one cohesive environment. I
liked the storytelling aspect of
the added details, and if my
intention was to create an
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I went back and looked at
my original sketch, and after
comparing it to my current
draft, I took a huge step
back. I reestablished thediagonal light coming
through the window, and
faded out some of the areas
that were not focal points.
I can still keep a lot of the
details from the previous
draft, but they need to all
look like they sit within the
lighting of the space.Although there is always a
temptation to render every
item in a scene, not
everything is going to be
evenly lit; items in shadow
will have less contrast than
items being hit by the light
sources.
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I redesigned and repositioned
the main monster a little. I
wanted to exaggerate the
shadow he cast upon the bed
and the floor, to increase thesense that he is large and
ominous.
I also added more subtle reds in
the bottom of the image to give
some movement and contrast
from the blue-green upper
portion to the warmer colors
surrounding the girl and her
gryphon.
Notice that although the
gryphons egg is lit up, it is not
a light source; the is moonlight
illuminating its glossy surface
and making it glow slightly.
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I experimented a little
more with the
composition and tried out
having only the one main
visible monster. The
monsters face is in
shadow, and a separate
monster tail cut across
the floor around the egg
hinting that there are
more creatures in the
room. I like the
spookiness, but I think its
a step too far: now its a
little too moody and
atmospheric.
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Here is my final draft. Ive
combined elements that I liked
from other drafts, andpolished it up. Small details
are present, but they dont
overwhelm or clutter the
scene. The scene has some
hazy atmospheric elements,
but its still clearly a young
girls bedroom. There are a
few stuffed toys and drawings
lying around, but they do not
dominate the piece or distractthe viewer too much from the
main areas of focus. The
monster is cloaked in shadow
and helps form a strong
diagonal line. The girl clutches
her new gryphon friend ,
wrapping him in blankets and
hiding him from view. The
viewer is left to wonder what
happens afterwards, and
hopefully will spend time
looking at it and thinking
about the larger story that I
hint at in the finished piece.
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Here Ill take a moment and go over painting the girl in detail.
Ive laid in the basic areas of color on
top of the BW sketch in an Overlay
layer. I broadly brushed in muted
green, then added yellow over the
gryphon and red on the drapery
elements. By itself, the overlay layer
is very washed out.
To bring out the color more, I put a
Multiply layer on top of the washed out
overlay layer, and paint light yellow
over the gryphon. This intensifies anddarkens the color so it isnt as washed
out. Notice that since the gryphon is
emitting light, Im letting the yellow
flood from the gryphon onto the girls
face to show that his light is reflecting
onto her.
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Now Im starting in on the more careful
rendering. Ive started detailing the
faces and drapery. I hadnt decided fully
on the specifics of pose yet, so thats
left pretty sketchy for the time being.
The girls cheek is still strongly lit by the
glow from the gryphon, while the other
side of her face is in blue-green
shadow. To further enhance the feeling
that the gryphon is glowing, Ive added
some glowing patches on the bed sheet
above him to show that the light is
shining through the fabric.
Here I realized that the gryphon was just
too bright, so I toned him down quite a
lot as I retouched the composition. Ive
reworked the girls clothes and the
shape of the drapery surrounding her,
and worked on her face a little more.
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Now Im working some warmth back into the
scene, and making the gryphon glow a little
more. Right now, the light shining on the
girls face feels more like reflected light: soft
and gentle instead of glaring. Notice that her
clothes and bed sheets all read as being
pinkish, despite it being very muted. As I
mentioned earlier in this chapter, the pale
light of the scene will fade cool off the areas
of warm colors.
Finally, I put more yellow light on the girl,
drapery and bedpost, to make it look more
like the gryphon was emitting light. I didnt
want to go too overboard, though; it doesnt
take much to make him stand out, so I want
only enough to make him look like a light
source, not a spotlight.