Starting From Scratch

When an illustration isn't working, plus a detailed look at my process

Hello there! I hope you’re doing well and have some fun things planned for this weekend. I think I might do some hiking with my husband and Frisket.

This week I illustrated a new piece, and I <gasp!> did it twice. I’m not typically a do-over kind of gal. Usually if I run into composition problems, I’ll scan the piece in and make adjustments in Procreate…because there’s often stuff I want to preserve, bits and pieces that are working, and plenty of stuff I don’t want to have to draw again. But when something’s not quite gelling, moving to a space where everything is possible can create more confusion in a Should I move this here? Or how about over here? Oooh maybe here! kind of way. So I wanted to see what would happen if I nixed all that trial and error and started from scratch.

Wanna see how it went? I’ll share the ins and outs of what I thought was working, what I thought definitely wasn’t working, and how starting over panned out.

Round 1: FIGHT!

Here’s the concept: A little girl is reading to her stuffed animals. Unbeknownst to her, a crew of real animals have gathered at the window behind her to listen to the story.

I started out with thumbnails. Very chicken-scratchy, I know.

In the top two, I explore whether or not I want to do an angled view or a straight-on view. I opted for an angled view, which is usually a bit more interesting to me.

In the middle thumbnails I’m starting to explore light. On the left, I’m thinking about how the window will be darker than the room, and on the right, I’m trying to decide if I want to include a visible light source (I don’t).

In the bottom two, I’m digging into light a bit more and starting to think about color.

Here I’ve jumped into line art. I’m working with watercolor pencils, and they don’t erase well, so I started with a pale yellow which can wash away pretty easily. Then I overlaid that with pink which is easier to see, but also pretty easy to dilute on the page. This second layer helped me refine my sketchier lines.

I didn’t nail the girl at first, so I went back and did a few trials in my sketchbook before laying in the pink.

Here I’m laying down values, aka the scariest phase! Honestly I think this is where things started to go awry. I wanted to create a separation between warm and cool areas of the image, but I think I was a little heavy-handed with the yellow.

I also painted the foreground animals individually instead of grouping them together within a shape of light like I should have. The contrast of each animal silhouetted against the darker ground makes them stand out, but they’re not meant to be the focus of this piece.

I kept things light because of the additive nature of watercolor, so none of this seemed like a big deal at this stage, but it didn’t do me any favors.

Love that texture, though! I’ve spent so much time in Procreate trying to fake the organic chaos that happens instantly with water and pigment.

Here I redefine my lines so I can keep layering without loosing my guides.

At this point I’ve laid in a lot of color, and I can start to see that things aren’t working. There are some magic moments, I love the rabbit in the background and the weight of the raccoon plushie in the foreground.

But the piece is feeling flat. The bear and deer in the background take up so much space but they’re just standing there. They’re obviously listening, but they’re too static.

And the yellow in the foreground is too saturated. Since that’s supposed to represent the lightest area of the room, it’s forced me to saturate everything else to try to balance it out.

This is where I started to consider if I wanted to scan it in and keep going. I could solve the problem with the yellow in Procreate, but the composition feels off, too. It’s looking more like a head-on view instead of the angled view I’d intended. And the kid wasn’t particularly engaging either.

I like this guy though:

Naturally I didn’t want to start over. I’d invested a solid chunk of time, and since I was still pretty solidly in the ugly phase, I had a sense I could improve on what was there if I kept going. But I’m trying to level up and that means breaking my weaker patterns. So after waffling a bit, I decided it wouldn’t kill me to start from scratch. Sigh.

Round 2: FIGHT!

I went back to thumbnails again. I wanted to clarify my vantage point, and to take another stab at the animals in the background.¹ I decided to change the deer to a moose, mostly to simplify the antler situation. And I wanted to get the bear more engaged. I also decided to draw in the window this time, rather than using the ol’ “fix it in post²” technique.

So here I am, back at it, bear hugs, window panes, and all.

This time I laid down my first lines very lightly in graphite. Then I went around the page erasing graphite lines and replacing them with watercolor pencil. This is why my lines look much more confident in this round. Well, that and how many times have I drawn this comp now?

I feel much better about this version. The angles and scale feel much better.

The scary part again! This time I decided to warm up the whole image and lean on pure dark vs light for my base texture. I grouped all of the light and shadow into two pretty distinct zones, which makes the whole composition simpler, despite having the same number of elements.

I went back over my lines, but because I left space unpainted this time, I only had to go over the lines in the shadows. As I look at it now, I realize I could’ve omitted some of those, too. Some of the shadows are so nice and would benefit from lost edges³. Definitely something to explore next time.

Getting there! At this point I started to wish I’d made the quilt simpler. But I’m loving the texture in the top/shadow portion of the piece.

Here I laid down a wash to mellow out the quilt. Then I added in some darker squares to bring some of the geometry back. I wasn’t sure about it, but I think it ended up working okay. I also added stripes to the girl’s sweater to balance out the raccoon’s tail. I think it drew too much attention without a bit of pattern spread throughout the piece.

VICTORY!

Here’s the final piece after scanning and touch ups. I know it looks pretty different but I think a lot of that can be attributed to the difference between a quality scan and a quick snap with my phone.

Here’s what I did digitally: I adjusted the light levels. I added a couple of color overlays with the Soft Light blend mode (some cyan in the foreground and magenta in the back). I lightened the quilt in front of the plushies a little. I tweaked the girl’s face, and I darkened the animals and sky in the window area a bit.

That’s way less digital work than I would’ve done if I’d worked from the first image. And while I can’t say for certain, I think I would’ve spent more time trying to fix the first image than I did by doing a whole new one. And it probably still wouldn’t be all that great. Getting it mostly right before scanning makes it much easier to use a light touch when I’m doing clean-up.

And now my background bun has a bestie:

I realized these two popped up in an older piece, also in the background.

I’m gonna have to do more with them!

On My Radar

While I was in the hospital with my dad, Devon Holzwarth quietly started posting to Substack. I’m sure she needs no introduction, but just in case, she’s one of the best illustrators I know, and a really awesome human to boot. Plus every publishing person I know loves her work, so go subscribe. You might learn something!

I stumbled upon this podcast a couple of days ago and really enjoyed it. Matthew Forsythe is one of my favorite author/illustrators, and he spends a good deal of time talking about story craft in this interview.

On My Mind

For those of you wondering, my dad’s still improving. He’s still got a long way to go but his physical therapist seems to think he’s way ahead of the curve considering what he went through. He can walk down the block. And the last time he went to church he was able to use a cane instead of a wheelchair. And he even sat in on bass with the church band (although he might have overdone it a little). He’s thinking he may be ready to drive in a month.

I’m so happy about his progress! Whether you’re sick or not, having little goals to focus on means everything when your whole world has been yanked out from under you. Mindset is so important! His pancreas hasn’t fully healed yet, and I’m not sure it ever will, but he’s slowly getting his strength back, and I find that very encouraging.

Until next time!

1. No animals were harmed during the creation of this illustration.

2. “Fix it in post” is a saying in video and film. It means you see there’s a problem, and you’ll fix it during post-production. I went to school for video and this became a bit of a running joke, because 9 out of 10 times, the resulting fix would be so obviously sub-par that it would have been better to just do it right in the first time.

3. Lost edges occur when the edge of one element blends seamlessly into its background. Often this happens in the shadow of a subject, but it can happen in light, too.