My First Digital Illustrations

When COVID hit, I found myself spending all of my time at home, and contemplating where my passions lie. Thinking of what gave me inspiration as a child, I remembered choosing books from the library based solely on the illustrations on the cover and on the pages inside. I never read a single word from these books but spent hours staring at the beautiful drawings. 

I've always known that being an illustrator is a dream of mine, but being a classically trained animator / artist I didn't have the digital knowledge or skill that the industry expects from its artists.

So I took the plunge, bought a Wacom Cintiq drawing monitor, watched hundreds of YouTube videos from inspiring successful digital illustrators on how they use Photoshop, and taught myself how to use my classical training (through the Cintiq) to produce digital illustrations in Photoshop. 

Last May I produced my first proffessional digital illustration. A book cover for a Sudbury publishing house, Prise de Parole. 

 

With this proffesional success, I went on a hunt for an app that would let me use my new found skills on my Samsung Galaxy Tab. I discovered Clip Studio Paint. I purchased the Pro version. It was much less expensive than the EX and provided everything I needed.

I recently finished my first illustration using only Clip Studio Paint and my Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 lite.

In my workflow, I always start with a quick gestural sketch to decide on the visual flow of the piece as well as the basic proportions of the elements I want.

Then I create a new layer and draw a rough over the gesture to decide what the overall drawing will look like.

After lowering the opacity on the rough layer, I will create a new layer to draw the line art for the piece. 

Next I'll create separate colour layers for the foreground, middle grounds, and background. Each with clipped layers for shadow, occlusion shadow, light, highlight, and texture.