Mimi's Illustration Club May - Third Activity! (Patreon)

Hello again my beautiful friends! 

It’s time for activity number 3 for this month's Illustration Club and this activity is all about creating a final illustration!

The prompt for this month as you already know is ‘a cozy home’ which I think has so much potential for creating lovely scenes! So far in the club this month we’ve filled a sketchbook page with ideas relating to the prompt, then we explored some composition sketches from those ideas, and now we can take one of those composition ideas and create a final illustration from it.

You can of course use any medium that you want to for your final illustration, and just have fun with it! The aim of this activity (and the whole club) is to explore the creative process and enjoy practising our art skills together, so if you can achieve those two things then whatever you create is a success!

I hope that the last two activities have given you some confidence for your final illustration, and if you've skipped those activities and come straight to this one then that's fine too 😊

So I’ll show you what I created for this activity based on a sketch from activity 2!

This is my final illustration for 'a cozy home' and I think it's quite sweet! Now that I've spent some time away from it and am looking at it with fresh eyes I think it's a little too soft overall but I still like it and enjoyed illustrating it.

I like the idea of a cat and mouse relaxing together and watching the world go by outside the window, and of course I had to add some hearts and sparkles!

So here is a quick breakdown of the process from sketch to finished illustration and the colour palette as well (which you're welcome to use for your own illustrations too!). If you're a Beautiful Bluebell then I'll be sharing a video today or tomorrow with a walkthrough of my illustration process.

The process for this illustration went a little something like this:

Using my pencil sketch as a reference, I redrew my composition as a digital sketch and refined a few things

Then I made my digital sketch layer about 20% opacity and multiply blend mode so that I would be able to use it as a reference

On new layers below, I started colouring in all of my shapes. Mostly I draw each different element on its own layer

Once everything had a basic colour, I then gave everything a broad pass of shading/texture

Then I gave everything a finer pass of deeper shading

I then drew in little details like the cat's fur and lines on the leaves

And that's about it!

It took me about two hours to draw this illustration (but don't let that be an indication of how long you should take, go at your own pace) 🥰

Now it's your turn (yay!) - take one of the composition sketches that you drew in activity 2 and create a final illustration from it. Or if you feel like it you can do a completely new idea!

These activities pretty much replicate my normal art process when I'm faced with a new prompt - I brainstorm ideas, doodle down a few sketches to explore some compositions, and then illustrate my final piece.

If you do draw a final illustration with the prompt this month then feel free to share it with us over on Discord in the #final-illustrations channel. 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 your final illustrations for your cozy homes, and I’ll be posting this drawing to Instagram soon (feel free to share yours on social media as well).❤