From Sketch to Screen: The Process Behind My Digital Illustrations

Creativity strikes at the randomest times and for me, it struck at 3pm on a Friday afternoon. I had not illustrated a piece from my own head in what felt like ages and so I wanted to document the process and make a quick video going over it as well. This is a fun experiment to see if I’ll enjoy making more videos like this in the future! So let’s jump into how I illustrate.

Tools I used:

• Procreate

  • Tip Top Riso Brushes for Procreate 2023

  • True Grit Texture Supply Halftone Brushes

  • 6b & Technical Pencil Default Brushes

  • Customized Dry Ink Default Brush

• Photoshop (for the text)

The sketch for this was off to a really rough start I felt that it was leading too much one way, the face was terrifying and I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired by the background either.

Something I tend to do is “lineart” but having the line art still basically be a refined sketch. As you’ll continue to noticed throughout my illustration work, I love texture and when I find the perfect textured brush I use it TOO much honestly. But here I was really going for a sketchier look I don’t even really refine the face very much.

A technique I kind of fell in love with were combining more tactile or traditional art tool textures with something that was more mechanical. Here in this burgundy mushroom I added in a small halftone texture and I think it adds a very graphic interest to that area.

The second technique I fell in love with was doing the slightest washes of a contrasting or complementary color to just add a lot more dimension to the mushrooms I did it too. Here you can see some examples where I used a very slight but deep blue and even some green to add more variation in the colors.

Overall I’d say I’m really happy I was able to do something like this, I hope it means I can start illustrating semi-regularly again after a very long burnout art block. Time can only tell.