A Journey of Gnomes
Hi friends!
Welcome to my deep dive on how I went from sketch to final art for the latest Deep Freeze Festival illustration!
Deep Freeze is Edmonton’s favourite cold-weather outdoor festival, welcoming visitors to the historic Alberta Avenue neighbourhood to embrace winter activities and the art, dance, and cuisine of Métis, Ukrainian and French people.
Please enjoy!
STEP ONE: Super-Crude Thumbnails That Nobody Sees (…until now)!
One of my favourite prolific illustrators of little creatures is Phoebe Whal, whose work informed to get my the earliest phase of this project. She does a great job illustrating little characters with such charming clothing! Check out her shop (I have dreamed of having one of her enamel mugs for YEARS) 😍
I also looked through some fungi books I have at home, including Fungal Inspiration (which I have some work in [cough, cough] no big deal…).
STEP TWO: Mushroom Exploration!
The client had asked me to include a variety of mushroom species in this year’s illo. I like having an excuse to draw plants, so I took some time to draw in my sketchbook, just for fun.
I realized quickly that I need to take more care with researching specific mushrooms that were requested, as they have special significance for the Métis, Ukrainian and French. Some quick Google searches on morel, shiraki stool, portabello, chanterelle, oyster and other species came next!
STEP THREE: Refined Thumbnails!
These three directions were refined and send off to the client for review.
Step FOUR: Refined Pencil Sketch.
At this stage, I incorporated some client feedback (they were interested in seeing an entire gnome celebration with lights, steins, mushroom houses, etc.). I also took some time to incorporate specific kinds of mushrooms!
Step FIVE: Final Art!
Aaaaannnnd of course some other animals crept in at this phase… but we have lots of room at the top for the designer to incorporate a header, dates and other elements.
STEP SIX: Vectorizing the artwork for t-shirts and swag.
Et voila!
Golly, that was fun! Thanks for reading—Keep your radio tuned to this blog for future Deep Dives!