Illustration Process

Kyla Is Inspired | Illustration Process

Happy Monday everyone! Today I thought I'd share something a bit different: my illustration process. I see all of my favorite illustrations doing the same, so I thought, why not?This particular illustration is part of a much larger commissioned holiday piece, but I wanted to show my basic process for illustration of these ladies, as it's the same for most of my pieces. I also want to mention, all of my illustrations are vector-based, created in illustrator.

Sketch: Pretty basic. I'll either draw directly in photoshop (like this), or scan something I drew in pencil.

Line art: This is where I "ink" over my sketch with lines in illustrator. I also clean up any errors I may have had with the sketch.

Flat colors: I block in the basic colors of my drawing. Usually I go through lots of options before settling on something I like. Here, I went with festive warm colors.

Shading! I usually do some basic shading over the whole drawing first. My process is lots of shapes of varying opacity. Once I get the basic shading done, I go over it again with contrasting colors to create depth. This particular illustration has no light source, and it's going to be small when printed, so I didn't go crazy with this step as I do with others.

Final effects: Here, I added shading "dots" and sparkles to the girls to make them pop. This step would typically also include creating a background, but since this is part of something larger I skipped this. 

I hope this sheds some light into my process! It's different for everyone, and this is just my way. What are your processes for creating something? I'd love to know!