Mimi's Illustration Club April - Final Illustration 🖼️✨ (Patreon)

Hi lovelies,

I've finished my final illustration for this month's prompt 'an underground burrow' and want to show you!

Earlier in the month I sketched out some ideas on a sketchbook page just to warm up and brainstorm some potential illustration ideas, and now I've turned that into a digital illustration.

I decided to draw a little worm in their underground home with their pet beetle, and wanted to make sure it looked nice and cosy!

Let me show you a quick breakdown of my illustration process and the basic palette that I used (which you can download below if you'd like to use it yourself). 

So my drawing process for this one went something like this:

First a drew a simple sketch of my composition. I wanted to see a cross-section of the ground and have a peek into their burrow so I started with that shape, and then drew a cosy scene inside. I added a few leaves and stones into the ground so that it wouldn't be too plain.

Then I made my sketch later about 30% opacity so that I'd be able to use it as a reference.

On new layers below, I coloured in all of the different shapes in flat colour. Lots of the individual elements go on their own layers, but things that will all be getting the same shading treatment - like all of the stones, or all of the leaves - can go on the same layer together.

Then I start adding smaller details to the scene and give everything a really broad pass of texture (mostly with my Textured Pencil Light or Soft Crayon brush).

Next, I layer in lots of shading using texture brushes, so everything that might cast a shadow (especially under the light in the burrow) gets a couple of layers of shading. I usually do more than one layer so that I can add a broad shadow first, and then a much more defined, darker shadow right at the base of the object.

Then I added some highlights and soft lighting in the burrow which was quite important for this illustration to feel nice and cosy.

And that's it!

A lot of my simple illustrations take me about 1-2 hours to draw, but this one definitely took me a few hours! I think I got carried away while I was watching TV 😅

If you'd like to join in and draw a final illustration with the prompt this month then feel free to share it with us in the community chat here on Patreon. Everyone is welcome, and you can share what you've created for any of the activities at any time!

I'm really looking forward to seeing how your illustrations turn out ❤