This was originally posted on my now-defunct creative blog.
I know, I know, it’s been a long time since I have posted anything on here. I am aiming to change that from here on out, starting now.
These four guys were designed for a children’s book that my wife is writing, and they were created as these artworks to be printed onto canvas and adorn the walls of our as yet unborn child’s nursery.
I created these illustrations in Sketchbook Pro, mostly using the Copic library. To start with, I would roughly work out the composition of the character using a bright colour, then add in layers of colour above that one. Once the character was in place I would decide on a nice complimentary pastel shade to make the background, then remove the colour from underneath the character themselves, giving it a rough, collage-style look.
I kept the brush size quite large intentionally, so I wouldn’t get bogged down adding too much detail – I wanted these pictures to be bold and colourful as they were destined for a nursery which will be dominated by bright, happy colours. I also made sure to migrate some of the colours from picture to picture, so they all felt like part of a set.
