Sunday, July 1, 2007

Weekly Theme: "Back to the Drawing Board"

Sometimes you are hired to sketch a subject you are totally unfamiliar with. I love looking at tigers, but to my knowledge, I've never drawn one before. I don't like to work from photos, I think it makes my work rigid, and I prefer to come up with ideas from my imagination. A project I'm currently working on has a spread featuring a tiger and this was my process:

Quick sketch of tiger from memory. Not close at all. Looks more like moody housecat (which I know a LOT about):



Finally, I had to resort to looking at photo reference. Many tiger photos and lots of drawings later, I came up with this fella. Sometimes I like to work digitally to add quick color that I can "undo" if necessary:




He was way too realistic and didn't look like anything I would ever paint. When I have to go the "realistic" route, I like to practice that, and then put it away and start over. Then I approach the whole thing again from memory, making him more in my own style. Here's the final sketch:



A little bit tiger, a little bit pussycat, but much more in my style.

3 comments:

Alicia Padrón said...

Hi Laura, my name is Alicia Padrón. I've been reading and visiting your blog everyday for some time now and really love it.
I think is wonderful what all of you are doing and sharing. I'm also an illustrator and I have to say that i love your style and how you work the watercolors :-)
I love children's illustration, have done freelance work for toys and puzzles here in Venezuela but never published a book..Hopefully one day..That's my dream.
Just wanted to thank you for your site and I'll keep visiting and learning from you experience.
Alicia.

Laura said...

Hi Alicia! Thank you so much for visiting our site, that's what we hoped for. And thanks for the kind words too. It's great to meet others who share our passion for children's books and illustrating. Best wishes to you and hope you'll come back often!

Laura

Alicia Padrón said...

Sure, I'm planning on visiting everyday :-)

Ali