With summer ending soon and the new school year upon us, I wanted to make something as a reminder to soak up the sun while we can and savor those last few days of vacation.
I started with a mood board to capture the finding-peace-in-nature vibe I was going for.
Here’s the sketch I ended up with:
And here’s a breakdown of some of the stages in the painting process:
This ended up being a lot more involved than I had anticipated (84 hours of painting to be exact)! As I was working on this I was also going through an online class through 21 Draw taught by Simone Grunewald (@schmoedraws) called Digital Illustration with Procreate that I found super helpful. It focuses a lot on integrating characters with environments, lighting techniques, and adding a traditional art feel to digital work. I definitely recommend it!
One thing I struggled with a lot on this one was indecision, which led to juggling way too many layers. This is a common problem for me since I started to work digitally. The ability to work in layers is one of my favorite things about digital art, but it’s also really easy to get carried away and end up overwhelmed when you have too many of them.
I guess for me I’m always afraid I won’t be happy with a change I want to make, so I end up with like a hundred backup layers that I then have to sort through. There comes a point where you have to just choose a direction and commit to it–easier said than done, but I’m working on it.
Here’s the finished illustration:
