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

Hello everyone!

I know it's almost the end of the month but I finally finished my illustration for this month's illustration club and I want to share it with you! I was away on a little holiday over the last week (I'll tell you all about it in my next newsletter) so I drew it while I was away.

As you know, the prompt for this month is 'Colours In Nature' and I decided to draw the chameleon sketch that I drew for the second activity.

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 'Colours In Nature' - I've never drawn a chameleon before and they turned out better than I expected! I think it's fun that they blend into the background a little bit, I drew the background first and then drew some of the same flower shapes on top of the chameleon skin.

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):

My process went a little something like this:

First I drew a digital version of the composition that I drew in my sketchbook. The original sketch was very simple so I refined it quite a bit for the digital version. 

Then I made the sketch layer about 30% opacity so that I would easily be able to see through it.

On new layers below, I coloured in all of my shapes (I used my 'Smooth Shading' brush in Procreate and my 'Texture Medium' brush quite a lot). For this one I drew the background flowers first so that when I drew the chameleon layers I could draw some more flowers on top that matched the background.

Then I added details to suggest the scales of the chameleon and lots of flower details.

I drew quite a few shading and texture layers, mostly using my 'Soft Crayon' and 'Chunky Crayon' brushes. 

I finalised any extra details and that's about it!

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 ❤