Mimi's Illustration Club November - Second Activity (Patreon)

Hello everyone,

I've drawn some cosy composition ideas for this month's illustration club and would love to show you!

So activity two for the club is all about exploring compositions. Feel free to skip this explainer if you already know all about it!

Now that we've had a brainstorming session to jot down ideas relating to our prompt (which this month is 'spending time together'), we can start refining some of those ideas into composition thumbnails that we can use for our final illustration. Your sketches might have been developed enough to not need this stage, but I still quite enjoy it 😊

To explore some composition ideas in this activity, have a look over the ideas that you came up with in activity 1, and think about which of those ideas stand out to you most and see if you can make a little scene out of them as a composition. Keep in mind what you want to be the focus of the scene, and how you can draw the viewer's eye there.

You can draw as many little composition ideas as you like, I usually draw three but you can just draw one or you can draw 10! And they can also be really simple, don’t feel like you need to make a masterpiece here.

The aim is to end this activity with at least one sketch that you’d be happy to use for the final illustration for this month’s club.

How do we make an interesting composition?

There are lots of things you could consider for an interesting composition but it also doesn’t have to be complicated. If you’re a Beautiful Bluebell you can watch a lesson video about How To Make An Interesting Composition here. 

The basics are:

Have A Focal Point - Where do you want to draw the viewer’s attention and how can you make that stand out?

Create Balance - Be mindful of having too many things weighted to one area to avoid the composition being off balance

Foreground, Midground and Background - If you think your composition is feeling a bit flat, consider adding some foreground or background elements to it

Rule Of Thirds - Splitting your composition into thirds and drawing your main elements along one of those lines or at their intersections can be a simple way to make your composition more interesting

So as a little reminder, here’s what I drew for last week’s activity and I'll be using some of the ideas I sketched on this page to develop some basic compositions:

And these are the composition ideas that I came up with:

For sketch one I wanted to redraw the mice from my earlier sketchbook ideas but have them looking a bit more relaxed, so I drew one of them reading a book and the other one snuggling up with the blanket. I like to think that one is reading the book aloud and the other one is listening.

For sketch two I was going to draw a tea party scene but thought it would be fun if my characters were in the teacup instead (which is also simpler to draw). Ignore the one in the middle bottom - they need a bit of work 😅

And for sketch three I thought I'd zoom out and do a landscape scene, so I drew two people having a picnic at sunset. It's quite sweet but I think it's less fun that the other two!

Which one do you like best? I think the first one is my favourite!So, now it’s your turn - sketch out a few thumbnail compositions as options for a final illustration, and if you like you can share them with us over on Discord in the channel #exploring-compositions. Don't worry too much about making them too detailed or developed, we can focus on that next week. And if you'd like to jump straight into creating your final illustration, feel free to go ahead! ❤