Art Fundamentals

My illustration output and rendering skills have exploded these last few months; the above being the most recent piece I did. In this post I retrospectively share my work and resources I’ve been devouring on the quest to becoming a better visual communicator everyday.

For those interested in following the journey, every little sketch at a time, you can find me regularly posting on Instagram: @amandalynnelliott.

I am now also accepting commissions. Everything from simple sketches to elaborate complex scenes full of color. If you’re interested, message me here.

Alligator Ghostland

A big breakthrough I’ve had is embracing color and backgrounds. The above comic pages were heavily inspired by two things:

1. Austin Holcomb’s Night Physics Comic focusing on the elusive topic of dreams in beautiful pastel and psychedelic color palettes. With relatable characters and compelling themes like sexual ethics, suburban legends, ancient myths, and haunted houses, his work was an excellent pitstop for my studies.
2. Colette Baron-Reid’s Invizion Process, which is a kind of wakeful dreaming. While awake, in a meditative state, you ask yourself, “Where am I,” and allow your inner terrain to reveal itself. There are no right or wrong answers, but a process of letting your imagination guide you. Depending on your emotions, your inner landscape can be treacherous with storms, or you may have been wandering a deserted wasteland, with no hope for nourishment for miles. There are also pleasant inner landscapes full of abundance, like meadows, beaches, and lush paradises. Colette’s method shows us how to utilize our imaginative powers to establish where we are so that we can learn necessary lessons, heal, and progress forward into new lands, thus growing emotionally.

The comic was the result of me doing that process, dealing heavily on how I used to have reoccuring nightmares about alligators and my propensity towards workaholism.

A big part of embracing backgrounds has been to embrace where I live–Florida. I’ve spent so much time wanting to be somewhere else, but a tour of the country has given me an appreciation of it’s green palm trees, beaches, and, of course, alligators!

Continuing that train of thought, I did the next piece, drawing heavy inspiration from the local downtown area.

Crow and Rabbit

As a picture-making, paint-splashing bunny, this is about my partnership with a developer, portrayed here as a programming crow.

I am currently animating the rabbit and will share it along with a post about animation.

For a long time I've struggled with illustrating hilly and mountainous landscapes, and it wasn't until my trip that I realized why: I've been surrounded by the flatness of Florida this whole time! I didn't have any visuals to draw from. All the more reason to travel.

Fundamentals

Complex work is nothing more than the intertwining of basic skills, rightfully called, fundamentals, because all else is built on top of them. Here I share recent progress on the basic skills of color, rendering, perspective, and storytelling.

COLOR

A couple years ago, I simplified my drawing tools by deciding only to draw in black ink. The results of this stretch beyond my work. As I write this, I’m wearing a green shirt, purple hoodie, and red socks… I’ve been working without color for so long that I’ve been overcompensating with a blaring wardrobe that rarely ever matches!

I had some trepidation in re-committing myself to visual work, so I asked for a sign that I’m on the right path. The day after ordering a watercolor set and my decision to reintroduce color into my bland palette, I saw this rainbow while on my morning run. Not bad!

In addition to being inspired by Austin Holcomb’s work with color, I admire the work of David Catrow, a modest illustrator of over 70 children’s books! His colors and textures are so vibrant and playful, you can tell he’s a guy that has fun with his work.

The key to color success seems to be in limiting your color palette. This is an area that I’m not super confident in yet, but here are resources that have helped me so far.

Color resources:

• Sycra - How to Choose Colours that Work!
• Brandon Dayton - How to Choose Colors to Make Awesome Palettes - The KGamut tool mentioned here is very useful.

Rendering

The road to realistic rendering is to constantly observe the world around you. To be successful at this is, only study what you are genuinely interested in. If you aren’t interested in what’s before you, move on with a clean break, no hard feelings. It was you, not them! They’ll understand.

Sometimes the most interesting thing is to look where everyone isn’t looking.

When I was at Mount Rushmore I was more interested in the infrastructure and activity surrounding the monument than the monument itself. A collection of hundreds of people, all taking the same kind of photos, oblivious to everybody else around them, and gone within a few mintues. Instead of taking those very same pictures, I instead took pictures of people taking pictures!

There is so much to observe about life. A sketchbook is a fabulous companion for this process.

Rendering resources:

• Kim Jung Gi’s live drawings will show you what is possible. His incredible visual memory is the artistic equivalent to the first runner to accomplish the 4-minute-mile, showing us what is possible. I gleamed a lot from his lectures.
• Modern Day James breaks down this process in his Becoming a Gi series. Just watch it for the funny intro and you won’t be disappointed.
• Alphonso Dunn’s pen and ink videos bring rendering down-to-earth in these easily digestible videos. Below are a couple studies I drew from his work.

Perspective

Perspective, or the illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface, is a beast that I’ve been avoiding for a long time, but it guards the most powerful world-building tool known to man.

Again, the best way to learn is to observe it in action.

Perspective resources:

• DrawaBox has a great compilation of lessons, challenges, and community around understanding and conveying the solidity and weight of forms and how they relate to one another in 3D space.
• Framed Perspective Vol 1 by master artist Marcos Mateu-Mestre. Just got my copy and I’ve been reading it over breakfast every morning.

STORYTELLING

An insight into storytelling came from studying the breathtaking work of late master comic artist, Moebius. When looking at his illustrations, I feel like I’m entering a dynamic world, with real breathing characters, and complexities that reach beyond a single static image. How did he accomplish this? What makes his work so compelling?

It seems that the answer here is same as it is for questions like, why is Game of Thrones such a compelling story?

What makes people read stories, written or visual, is that they are interesting. It seems obvious enough, but it’s a challenging feat to accomplish. As a creator, it’s like having your audience on a fishing line. They come for the intrigue, the questions they have–that’s the bait. For instance, here are some questions for my recent piece:

• What time period are these guys from?
• Why is that guy on the donkey like that?
• Is the donkey real or trained to be ridden like that?… You get the idea.

It’s the detail that lends to intrigue, a weird outfit for instance, and that’s where rendering comes into play. Then it’s tools like perspective that add a layer of wonder in making the scenario believable.

But it’s not enough to entice an audience into just asking questions and answering them all right away. That’s letting them swim away with the bait–no! You have to reel them in by giving them some answers–some, not all–and ideally in a way that presents new questions as old ones are answered.

Think about story in all the movies and shows you enjoy. The second things become predictable, it’s boring. We humans are curious and love investigating, and it’s the job of the storyteller to build something with the intention not to show everything, to instead keep the audience in the dark. The more that is hidden, like a massive iceberg underwater, the more rich, concentrated, dynamic, and real those parts of the world that you grasp at feels.

Compelling illustrations bring out the wonder in people, and this makes sense. When you are wondering, your eyes are wandering, looking for answers to the questions that the creator made for you to ask.

Is this illustration static, like characters posing for a photo, or are characters mid-movement? What were they doing before and what will they do after this moment you are capturing? These are the questions I let guide me.

Only one resource for storytelling. It has inspired me greatly: Moebius AKA Jean Giraud - 18 Wisdom-Filled Tips to Aspiring Artists.

The Process of Reinvention

Inspired by an article called The 4 Phases Of Developing Your Creative Voice.

All creators learn by mimicing. All bands I know started as cover bands. All novelists are ferocious readers. Artists copy other artists as necessity.

Do enough of this, then you feel compelled to break out and do your own thing. Practice technique enough, and you don’t have to consciously think about it anymore, liberating it to become a play-thing for your subconscious to express itself. The advice here is to start small and build your confidence up to the big things. Novelists started with short stories. Musicians started with riffs. Artists with fundamentals.

Then eventually you realize your limited range of expression. Growth stops, you feel like your work is a lie, and it’s time to discover the new tools of your next reinvention.

This is my path. Walk with me?

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You can follow my work on Instagram. If you have questions, would like advice, or to commission me for work, message me here.

Thanks for reading!