Making of 'Redhead at Beach'

As promised, here is the making of the "Redhed at Beach"!

The purpose of this post is to demonstrate my progress and the maturing of an idea, however simple it is. Some people ask me, have questions on how to start or just don't know how an illustration goes from rough to a finished state.

It's always interesting to do a laborious process of studies before attempting to make the final piece. Your work tends only gain from it and consequently you, both in knowledge as in portfolio.

Well, lets start! The concept of this illustration is simple, a themed summer / beach painting. So I decided to make a modern pinup of a girl with a little touch of retro relaxing on the beach taking an ice cream.

For better understanding I recommend that you download the image for a larger view.

Para usuários que falam português, dê uma passada no meu blog! O mesmo making of e descrição estão postados lá ([link]).


1- The very first Sketches.

As you can see in item 1 - I don't really bother with a clean strokes nor colors or anything. Its not meant to be anything final, only random sketches loose enough to put some ideas on paper. Play with poses, angles and situations. It's time to unleash your imagination! Usually in this phase I also begin to sketch the possible design of the character. While the redhead girl is a extremely simple design, this is something just very hard to do well. How to make something simple and interesting at the same time? Details must have something to say otherwise the just pollute your work and may even disrupt your idea as a whole. If the design is more complex the amount of sketches would be at least be double the size.

After these initial sketches are done I start to gather some references to strengthen the design a littler more.

2 - Composition studies and idea development.

In section 2 - I started practicing some thumbnails of composition within the frame of the scene. I admit I wasn't very used to do this amount of thumbnails, but since I decided to heavily study frame composition in the work, well, better make it count right? It is interesting to understand that you should not make very large sketches in this kind of study because our perception is always on top of the forms and shapes in general. The best way to catch this is by doing very small thumbs to feel the outline and silhouette of the character and scene. Large thumbs will prolly make you get distracted with unnecessary details as well, leave that to to first sketches and the final painting.

You can notice that at this stage the only thing that I bothered to do was to frame the character, think of positive and negative spaces, and a deeper exploration of the character of the narrative. Although the focus was to study the composition, I had an idea to make the character a mermaid, but I ultimately dismissed. I think focus is always good but if you have any interesting thought, explore it, return to step 1 - explore it more deeply! At least you can use this idea for a future work.

So the comp phase is an very important step for you to think mainly in the narrative. What's the purpose of this work, what's happening in the scene, what's the character doing, what's the personality you want to pass on to your audience. Those are very important questions that must be made in any illustration and everything should work FOR these responses.

If your illustration has no purpose whatsoever, then it will prolly be a bad work. Always think of a motive, a focus. Your work is the expression of yourself, so think through it carefully.

3 - Final layout and digital painting progress.

Once I determined a final sketch I start to layer in some basic colors for the final painting. For me this is a very enjoyable step, because I like dealing with colors, but I also deal with some design and framing issues as well. Since I did that a lot on other steps I do not need to freak out with major changes. The basic premise is all in there, the idea remained even as my perception of the work was increasing. The colors are also elements of narrative, then it is always important to keep in mind that the color palette you want to want to use is good enough to set the feeling you want to achieve with your audience.

In short, that's all folks! All this study will depend on the time you have at had to do the job. If I had some more time I would probably spend it studying the elements of the scene, design and probably render the piece even further.

This is basically my current way of working and it's constantly changing and evolving as we all must always be. I always try to add to my knowledge all that I acquire and what I'm taught as well. I think anyone who wants to evolve have to know that there is always something new to learn and there is always someone who knows more than you. Humility is key folks. Therefore, always study and have discipline, because there are no shortcuts in the world of figurative art. If you want to be good then get back to your studies and focus, focus, focus! It takes years for one to be reasonable good at this, so, the sooner you start, the better

Good studies!