sketches ep 10 | color tests (greens! 💚) | apple theme in the making 🍏 (Patreon)

Hi, hello!

I’m still swamped with work but finally managed to start working on this month’s goodies.

The process this month is a bit different than usual. I have several new markers and wanted to incorporate these colors in my new illustrations.

Let me bring you to the journey of the first step of illustration making!

Of course I have some sketches, since this is my way to warm up before any practice.

I just don’t like to go straight to coloring.

I think you wouldn’t be surprised if I told you this spread started out from being just a single apple illustration. There’s something about these full double page spreads. Sometimes I just can’t help myself, you know?

I think I should make an illustration like this in full color (and make a coloring page in this style?!)

There’s officially Autumn in my sketchbook!

COLOR TESTS

If you ever wondered how I come up with color combinations or how I decide which colors to use, this is an example of this. It’s quite simple - I just swatch some colors, then use some of them together in one simple illustration and decide which combinations are worth using in the future.

It probably needs more explanations and examples in the future, but today I can show you only results of this process.

As I mentioned (like 100 times at this point), I have a few new green markers.

I have my favorite combinations of greens but from time to time, especially when I add some new colors to my collection, I like to try new combinations, revisit old ones and decide which ones would work well for my next illustrations.

Here I tested only several combinations.

I have many more of them but this time I wanted to try colors for apple/pear leaves, so I skipped testing colors that would be too light, too yellowish or too saturated for that.

There’s also a few more ways to make combos of these colors I used in this spread, I just didn’t have time to make more of them.

As you might noticed, some of these combinations look almost exactly the same. In some only one new color added, can change the whole look. Isn’t that interesting?

Oh my, I’m legitimately obsessed with green. I could make a full post on green color combinations in the future (if anyone would be interested?!)

PEAR AND APPLE

I did draw pears and apples before. Once or twice, but still, I did!

Unfortunately I didn’t take any notes on colors used for pears, so I had to come up with them in the go. It went pretty well!

The last time I drew apples, they were red. Very red. Today I had a real life model and I wanted to depict its more subtle/pastel colors. That was a challenge for me!

I listed some colors I thought might work for these fruits, picked a few of them and hoped for the best, lol.

Also, based on the color tests I made before in the blue sketchbook, I decided to use darker/more saturated colors for leaves, since I was planning on using light/pastel/less saturated colors for fruits.

I think this apple illustration lacks contrast a little bit. I have to admit – I didn’t wanted to mess up this one. My next step would be drawing several more apples and explore the colors a little bit more.

In these illustrations I used pencils for making textures (have you noticed?!)

That’s not something I’d normally do (at least not at this level) but I love this effect!

Here you can see how the new illustrations look compared to old ones:

These old ones are more complex, but yeah, you get the idea!

That was fun sketchbook session!

What are the next steps?

Well, I’ll draw a few more apples to get the colors right and after that I’ll just draw even more of them and make wallpapers, stickers and prints out of these illustrations.

I’ll keep you updated and take some process pictures (and video!) on the way!

PS. I got messages from a few of you – from France and Sweden, that you already received September mail! Yayy! I really appreciate you letting me know.

I shipped them about two weeks ago, so my other European patrons should expect them in their mail boxes really soon, but American, Asian and Australian patrons would need to wait a little bit longer.

PS2. I forgot to mention that before: don’t be surprised if you find two vinyl stickers in the envelope. I made two designs and was planning on asking you which one you like better, but got busy and when it was time to ship the goodies, I decided to send both designs to everyone.

Marta