Lucy & Otter illustration. Hand inked, digitally coloured
Maybe this is totally normal for artists in general but I’m feeling like I have either not quite found my groove as far as process goes, or perhaps I just can’t stick to one thing because I have one of those crazy artist brains.
This Lucy & Otter picture is an example where I just couldn’t decide what I was doing.
Lucy & Otter illustration process.
Initial idea/sketch and initial hand inking were no worries, but then when it came to colour I just didn’t know what I was doing. At first I tried watercolour pencil and watercolour but the colours just turned out awful. Luckily I took a decent photo of the inking so that I could then fix it by colouring it in digitally instead. I’m still not happy with the colours used… but it was for the 52 Week Illustration Challenge and time was up for the week, so I had to just get it finished – which is good because I need to be forced to move on sometimes.
I’ve found myself switching between traditional and digital processes a lot, and I think all this switching and practice has made me realise that I work best with a nice balance of each. I feel my initial ideas often flow best when I put pencil to paper but I can then speed or neaten things up by working digitally.
I’m now setting myself a challenge for the next month to stick focus on creating a colour palette I’m happy with when creating images for challenges etc. Since my focus will be on colour selection I’ll probably stick to hand inking / digital colouring or digital everything for efficiency.
Hopefully one of my next posts will focus on creating colour palettes… and how I’ve got better at creating them!
*sigh* I wish I could draw! The otter is so cute :)