Hello friends!

​One of my goals this year is to get more work illustrating book covers, something that I’ve always dreamed of doing! I’ve been working to build up my portfolio by creating my own covers of some books that I love. Over the fall I listened to a really wonderful sequel to Pride and Prejudice called The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow. It follows the story of Mary Bennet through the original novel and beyond where she finds her own happy ending. I highly recommend it and the Audible narration was great if you like to draw and listen like I do! 

I finally had a chance to work on the cover over the last couple of weeks and I shared a quick screenshot of my sketching process over on Instagram the other day. It turned out to be my best performing story ever! Apparently the combo of dapper regency gentlemen and sharing about my art process is a winner. So today I thought I’d expand on that fun little story and share more about the unglamorous reality behind my sketching process.

I hear from a lot of people who feel discouraged because their sketches don’t look polished and pretty, or worse yet Instagram worthy. But the reality is that those things aren’t important. Sketching is for working out ideas and that is a messy and sometimes confusing process. I often have to draw something over and over again until I get the feel for it. In fact, the sketching phase for me is often the most brain boggling and time consuming part of the creative process. But it's one of the most important parts as well and so satisfying when you end up with a finished product that you love.

That said, let’s dive into my sketching process for this mockup cover. 

And here are the gentlemen in my final sketch. The last part of the process is where I focus on adding all of the details that make the sketch actually look like something. I feel like a lot of people just start drawing this final sketch phase first and then get frustrated when things aren’t going the way they’d hoped. The layout isn’t right and the elements are lacking finesse. I’m all for quirkiness in my illustration work but not when it compromises the overall foundation of the work. I know that not everyone works this way and that is totally fine. This is just the way that I’ve found works best for me. If you're struggling with your sketches I’d encourage you to try this technique out and feel free to change things up and try new things until you find the process that works best for you. ​

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Thanks for reading!

Hello friends!
​
In my last post I shared a little bit about how I approach drawing by focusing on the shapes of the subject rather than the subject itself (go check it out if you haven't already). This week I thought I would share a little bit more about how I use that approach to tackle drawing complex subjects like animals and people, and the three main steps I go through to get to my final drawing.
 
Step 1: Rough (The MOST important step in my process)
As I said before, it starts by changing the way we see and looking for the basic shapes of the object rather than the thing itself. When it comes to drawing animals and people those basic shapes are usually circles, ovals or rectangles for the head and torso followed by lines, slim ovals or sometimes other shapes to indicate limbs. I like to think of these basic shapes as landmarks that help me lay out the structure of the subject before I go into too much detail. Because this is just a rough layer you can make adjustments as you go and not worry about getting it perfect right away. (you should see some of my sketches, they’re a complete mess!)
 
Step 2: Refine
Once (and only once!) you’ve got your rough structure laid out. It’s time to refine your sketch. Clean up any messes and start to clarify the lines. We’re looking for a basic line drawing of the subject without details at this point.
 
In the image below you can see that I've lightly sketched out some circles to help me locate the hips, chest, head and shoulders and I've used lines to indicate the leg and arm position as well as the curve of the back. Then I've added oval shapes to clarify the limbs and started to refine the outline of the body.

​Step 3. Details
Now is the time to finally add the fun stuff. Facial features, hair (or fur!) clothes or any other features that aren’t really important to the basic structure. This is where you can start to add your own flair to the drawing so have fun with it!

Tip: 
If you want to draw something complicated and don't have your own reference photos, you can work from multiple sourced photos until you feel comfortable with how the structure works and then create your own pose and work from there. As with all things this method takes practice but is totally worth trying out and you’ll feel great knowing that you’ve drawn something totally unique to you!
 
I've done this below with these foxes. The first few are drawn from reference photos that I found online so that I could get a feel for how the fox looks and moves. In the sketches further down the page I've taken what I learned and started changing the positioning to make the drawings my own. Can you see how I've broken the fox down into basic shapes first using circles for the head, shoulders, hips and tail? Then I've just filled in the body and neck with connecting lines.