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

Hello beautiful flowers!

I've just had a nice little drawing session completing my final illustration for this month's illustration club so let's take a look!

As you know, the prompt for this month is 'in the sky' and I decided to illustrate a happy hot air balloon smiling at the sunshine ☀️

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.

If you skipped the first activities and came straight to drawing a final illustration that's totally fine!

You can use any medium you like to create your final illustration. The aim of this activity (and the whole club) is to just 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!

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

This is my final illustration for 'in the sky' and I really like that although it's a super simple illustration it still turned out really happy and sweet!

So here's a little breakdown of my illustration process as well as the basic colour palette that I used in case you'd like to use that for your own art (you can download it below). There will also be a drawing walkthrough video of my process for Beautiful Bluebells that will be available a bit later in the month.

My process went a little something like this:

First I drew a digital sketch based on the pencil sketch that I drew in activity 2.

Then I made that sketch layer 'multiply' blend mode and about 30% opacity so that I would be able to see through it onto new layers below. The 'multiply' blend mode means that the lines of this layer will always be multiplied by any colours below it so will be darker and more saturated (I just find that it makes my sketch easier to see).

On new layers below my sketch layer, I start colouring in every element of my illustration, using the sketch as a reference for the shapes. Usually the elements that are different colours get put on separate layers of their own.

Then I can start adding details like the sparkles and any line details that I think would enhance my illustration.

I give every element a few layers of texture and shading to bring it to life.

And then finally I added a texture overlay (I used overlay 01 from my brush pack) on top of the whole illustration and brought that down to about 15% opacity on 'overlay' blend mode.

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 (if you haven't already). 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 how your illustrations turn out ❤