Illustration Class: Background Illustration
For Illustration class we were assigned to make a background illustration of your made-up world. I was very happy when I heard this because I was already working on a world. So I decided to redesign the forest I made last time for this assignment. Also I highly recommend to read the short information about the forest for context!
Inspiration and Reference materials
This was my reference material. It contains the inspiration I found on Pinterest as well as my teacher's draw-over. I liked the tree on the right lower corner and decided to use that tree as my reference material.
Sketching the Concept
These are the three sketches I made for the concept I had in mind. I had rough idea as to how I want my forest to be, so I put that idea into work in the first sketch on the left. After receiving feedback, I tried another concept by using the rules of third correctly this time to fix my composition.
I liked what I did with the tree fading into the background in the second sketch and I also liked the leaf brush that I used so I decided to bring those back in my third and last sketch. I refined the last concept sketch to get a better idea of how exactly I want my illustration to look like so I added some details to it before I jumped to coloring.
Coloring
So for coloring I decided to start by making a silhouette of this tree and then do some greyscaling afterwards. The reason why I tackled it down with this method was because trees and other plants are organic, making it easier to form shapes since you don't need to sketch them with precision.
After greyscaling the sketch, I went on and use the overlay method to color everything else. Because of the amount of layers I used, it was a bit of a hassle so I got a classmate of mine to help me out a little.
I slowly build my way up from coloring to adding the lights in the teardrop-shaped lamps and in the pond, as well as the carvings on the tree and the stone. I also added some light reflections on the leaves to make it more lively along with some god-rays for the moonlight.
At the end, I received some last-minute feedback from a friend of mine and fixed the final details and finally finished my illustration.
The Final Product
We've finally reached the end of this project and I'm very very pleased and satisfied with how this turned out. I think that this was by far my most favourite assignment I have ever done for this class! We had a lot of freedom for this project and we were allowed to experiment with a lot of ways to create our illustration.
But before we end this, I'd like to show yo my old design of the Nox Forest, which was this:
But before we end this, I'd like to show yo my old design of the Nox Forest, which was this:
And here is the new design! (Don't forget to read the story!):
The Nox Forest
The Nox forest is a very peaceful yet wistful forest. The wooded place is surrounded by bright, green-blue colored leaves accompanied by some dark colored grass. Along with some particular, teardrop-shaped lantern hanging down the trees. Some part of the trees have carved details in them. The carving glows a bit because of the remaining magic that’s used for the carving of the tree. The lanterns you see are filled with the souls of the deceased Solarian people. Upon passing away, Solarian people chose to contain the souls inside these teardrop-shaped lanterns as teardrops represent the symbol of crying and sadness in general. This is a similarity to cremating someone in order to “preserve their spirit”, so to say.
This forest got its name because of the meaning “death”. The Solarian people often like to refer it as “companionship at night”, hence they also find themselves being accompanied by the preserved souls. People would often come and visit this holy forest in order to find solace. But also when they feel lonely or if they miss their loved ones. So if you ever feel lost or isolated, don’t forget that your friends and family are always nearby. Just follow the light.
