Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Project 1: HOME SWEET HOME
While my head is swirling with wanderlust, counting down the days until my next travel adventure, my heart is always fulfilled at home. I'm lucky to be able to work from home as an illustrator. Although I take breaks during the day, I'm amazed at how much time I can contentedly spend in my house. It truly is my home sweet home.
Media: black ink, watercolor
What makes your home feel just right? Do you have a favorite chair you love to sit in and sip your tea? Do you always read on the couch with a certain blanket wrapped around your legs? Perhaps you love to cook and spend hours in the kitchen, your favorite room in the house.
To create this project, you'll draw your home, surrounded by your favorite items, with black waterproof pen. Then, you'll add some loose watercolor washes and color to soften the feeling of the stark black lines and give your illustration warmth and friendliness. The end piece will be the perfect keepsake to hang in your home!
STEP 1: DRAW YOUR HOUSE
First, take a look at your home and break it down into simple shapes. I live in a classic post–World War II ranch house. It's long and rectangular with a low roofline. Draw the basic shapes to form the house in the center of the paper.
STEP 2: ADD HOUSE DETAILS
Now add more shapes to indicate windows, shutters, the front door, and so on. Add any simple, distinguishing landscaping that may be in front of your house. Don't go overboard. The key to this illustration is not to end up with an architectural rendering of your house, but instead, a sweet, simple impression.
STEP 3: FIND YOUR FAVORITES
Now is the fun part — surrounding your home with your favorite things! Choose a selection of household items that are meaningful or sentimental: Sketch all your options, and choose the ones you like the best.
STEP 4: ADD SIMPLE COLOR WASHES
Pick a color palette that makes you think of your home. You can be as literal or creative as you'd like. Perhaps your house has a relatively neutral palette. Instead of painting with beige, you might pick bright colors with pop that suggest the way your home makes you feel versus how it actually looks (see "Color & Moods").
Next, add color to the items and things around the house.
Don't be precious with your watercolor marks. Let the color spill over the lines to give the illustration a worn-in and loved feeling, like your own home sweet home.
STEP 5: ADD A SIMPLE FRAME
Draw an oval around your entire illustration. Next, add simple leaf shapes and a few berries. Add splashes of colors to the leaves and berries to finish the frame.
CHAPTER 2
Project 2: PET PORTRAIT
Having pets is gratifying. I have lived with dogs, cats, fish, and hamsters — all with their individual personalities — and each has become an integral part of my family. For this project, let's illustrate these memorable personalities. We'll use colored pencils and take cues from traditional portraiture painting, but we'll add an illustrative twist, with more cartoon/caricature styling and creative coloring.
Medium: colored pencil
We rescued an obese golden retriever named Ruby. Despite her weight, she always wanted to be part of the action. After a year of dieting and exercise, she got down to a healthy weight and became much more mobile, which worked in her favor so she could be ever present at our feet, begging for love and, of course, food.
It's not just bigger pets that exude personality. I once had a betta fish named Chuck who seemed relatively aloof at first. He'd swim in a nonchalant manner, back and forth in his bowl, but as soon as I sat down near him, he'd stop and come to the edge.
SIMPLE PET FACES
Let's start by drawing a few simple pet faces. For each face, start with a simple shape, and then add the necessary eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
ADD EXPRESSIONS
Here's a second set of those faces now showing a little more personality with their expressions. Just adding a simple smirk to a smile line can give more individuality to a pet!
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It's amazing how a very simple illustration can be a great representation of your pet. Don't worry about trying to make a photo-realistic version of your pet. Once you add an expression and accessories, your pet's likeness will shine through.
CAPTURING A PET'S PERSONALITY
If your pet were a person, what would its personality be like? A friendly grandmother who knits all day? A rambunctious kid who plays endless hours of baseball? A young girl enamored with glittery unicorns and pink bubble gum? Write a list of ideas about who your pet might be if he/she were a person.
Now, brainstorm a list of accessories that your pet's personality may wear or own — items from this list can become be great fodder for your portrait.
OUTFITS & ACCESSORIES
• Bow tie, tie, or scarf
• Shirt (rock concert T-shirt, vest, poet shirt, turtleneck, cardigan, fisherman's sweater, etc.)
• Pocket watch, wristwatch, smartphone
• Hat (top hat, beanie, fascinator, cloche, baseball cap, etc.)
• Glasses (spectacles, cat-eye glasses, reading glasses, sunglasses, big framed glasses, monocle, etc.)
• Hair accessories (bow, headband, scarf, etc.)
• Other accessories (purse, umbrella, stuffed toy, blanket, chair, etc.)
Now that you've practiced drawing simple pet faces and brainstormed the personality, put them both together and create a portrait. I'm going to draw my sister's chocolate lab, who lived in Colorado — his enthusiasm for the great outdoors was infectious!
STEP 1: DRAW A FRAME
Make a light line to draw the frame around your portrait. Choose a frame style that matches the personality of your pet. I'll draw a wood frame for an outdoorsy look. Color in the details of your frame with colored pencils.
STEP 2: DRAW THE PET'S PORTRAIT & ACCESSORIES
Start with a light gray pencil to lightly draw your pet's portrait, including accessories. This illustration is a light-hearted caricature, so don't worry about imperfections — these will only add to the charm! Once you're happy with the overall layout, use your choice of colored pencil to go over the lines with a heavier mark.
Colored pencils are a great medium for illustrating animal friends — especially furry ones! Quick lines or even just scribbles with a colored pencil make great fur textures.
STEP 3: FINAL COLOR DETAILS & BACKGROUND
Give yourself the freedom to experiment with color and stray from the actual fur color of your pet. Color can also add that extra element your portrait needs to convey your pet's true personality.
Don't forget to add a background. You could use a solid color or be creative and add a simple plaid, like one might find in a woodsy cabin, to match an outdoors-loving dog!
CHAPTER 3
Project 3: GARDEN
For this project, let's head out into our gardens or the park and become botanical illustrators! We'll use a free and easy doodle style to show off all the blooming flowers, grasses, and birds. Let's start with some simple doodles of flowers using basic shapes.
Media: black pen & markers
WHAT IS DOODLING?
I'm sure you've done it a thousand times before — those scribbles on the notepad while on the phone, sitting in a boring meeting, or listening to a long lecture. Often doodles are just meaningless mark-making. Sometimes we doodle more representational items: a heart, a house, a tree. Usually when we doodle we don't give much thought to the outcome — it's a way for us just to "space out."
Studies have shown that doodling helps us maintain some level of attention and not completely turn off or daydream. In full daydream mode, we lose context of the activity at hand and remember far less. So, doodle away — it's good for you!
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If you don't have a garden, grab your sketchbook and head to your nearest park or local nursery to capture some blooming flowers.
A garden can be filled with many other things too. Here are some simple doodles for other things you may find.
Put it all together and doodle a botanical illustration of your garden. Build up from the bottom, starting with a stone path. Using the doodles you practiced earlier, add layers of flowers to fill out the garden.
Then add bright color using everyday markers. This garden illustration is a doodle worth framing!
CHAPTER 4
Project 4: YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
Abstract illustration uses many of the same techniques as abstract fine art — color, line, and shape — to convey an idea. Familiar subjects are abstracted to geometric forms and remain easy to understand, even with simplistic rendering. A composition can be intensified with exaggerated shapes, colors, patterns, and line work to heighten the meaning of an illustration.
Medium: gouache
For this project, let's stay local and create an abstract illustration representing your own neighborhood, observing the colors of the neighboring houses, the curves and shapes of the roads, and any other distinguishing features that give your neighborhood character.
Abstract Warm-Up: CREATE AN ABSTRACT HOME
Let's start by practicing some techniques to create an abstract illustration of a single home.
INITIAL SKETCH
Using your initial sketch as a reference, study the basic shapes of the house and recreate the sketch with geometric forms, such as triangles and squares. To add playfulness, I intentionally skew and flatten the dimensionality to play up the shapes. I emphasize the defining elements. For the landscaping, use a variety of clean, organic shapes and lines.
ABSTRACT SKETCH
Start with an initial, representational sketch. This is my childhood home. It's a late 1920s Tudor-style and saw many years of our family life, from birthday parties to large family celebrations like my sister's wedding. It's a very traditional home, so creating an abstract version is less about what it actually looks like and more about the energy, vibrancy, and memories it represents.
COLOR BLOCKING
Now add color. Choose colors not based on the actual home but on your impression of the house. Using gouache paint, begin to block in areas of color. Don't worry about staying in the lines of your sketch. Let the shapes and colors overlap and layer on top of each other.
ADD PATTERNS & PERSONALITY
Once the first coat has dried, add details. Have fun and use expressionistic strokes. Continue to add painterly marks or playful patterns to indicate relationships with other shapes in the piece. In the end, the illustration clearly reads as a house, but one that is filled with much more personality than a traditional drawing.
CREATE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD ABSTRACT ILLUSTRATION
Now apply these techniques to illustrate an abstract impression of your neighborhood.
STEP 1: DEFINE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD'S COLOR PALETTE
First, come up with a suitable color palette that represents your feelings. Grab your sketchbook and colored pencils, and walk around the block. Scribble down the colors of the houses you see. Are they all neutral? Do some have a pop of color? Perhaps your neighborhood is filled with pine trees or colorful gardens. Are there many mailboxes or stop signs? Capture the color of these items in your sketchbook.
Study all the colors and decide which best represent the way you see your neighborhood. Feel free to interpret or change colors to fit your view as needed.
STEP 2: CREATE AN ABSTRACT SKETCH
Now create an abstract sketch of your neighborhood. To capture the overall sense of my neighborhood with its hills and vistas, I use a bird's-eye view and take the liberty to skew perspectives, foreshorten distances, and heighten hills to fit my viewpoint.
STEP 3: COLOR BLOCKING
Next use gouache paint, or the medium of your choice, to begin filling in color. I find it's sometimes easiest to paint from the back to the foreground.
Working from the back, continue to fill in the shapes with color.
Work all the way to the front of the scene.
STEP 4: ADD PATTERNS & DETAILS
Use your imagination to fill in the details. Gridlike lines can become neighborhoods in the distance. Hash marks and/or short strokes can indicate a grassy knoll, field, or yard. Try gestural brushstrokes to add other textures and dimension. Keep it as loose and conceptual as possible, but most of all have fun!
CHAPTER 5
Project 5: STATE OR REGION
There is so much to celebrate about where you live. Perhaps you live in California and love the year-round sunny weather, or maybe you're in Louisiana and can't get enough of the flowering magnolia trees. Let's look at a variety of inspiring examples to see how various media can create different effects.
Medium: mixed media
STATE COLOR & SYMBOL ILLUSTRATION
We'll start with a simple drawing using black ink and gouache to create a bold illustration of the state of Texas.
Draw the outline of the state's shape. There's no need to be meticulous; the general shape is typically fine, as many states (and countries) have very recognizable shapes.
TIP
Search the Internet for your state's colors, symbols, and flowers. It's amazing how many "official" symbols are assigned to a single state!
Using the colors and symbols of the Texas flag (red, white, and blue with a single star) as inspiration, fill in the background with large stars.
Add some bold color. Fill in the state with blue and the background with red, leaving the stars white.
STATE FLOWER ILLUSTRATION
Let's use a limited palette of five colored pencils to create an ode to the wild sunflower of the state of Kansas.
Start by drawing the shape of the state. This one is very easy — it's almost a rectangle! Add a banner at the top for the state name.
Fill the state with sunflowers! For each bloom, draw a simple circle and put some crisscrossed lines in the center. Then add petals around the edge.
Add a basic leaf shape to each flower to give the illustration more dimension and interest.
Lastly, use a light green pencil to color in the state, and add the name. This cheery illustration would look right at home hanging in a Kansas farmhouse!
FOOD ILLUSTRATION
Let's take another approach and focus on negative space — essentially drawing only the background and leaving the state blank. For this graphic illustration, you only need three markers — orange, green, and turquoise — to represent the tropical feel of Florida.
First, draw a very faint outline of the state's shape.
Next, add some simple oranges around the outline — just draw circles with leaves.
Use the turquoise marker to fill in the background. For an extra touch, you can put a heart close to where you live or perhaps somewhere you have vacationed!
LANDSCAPE ILLUSTRATION
Let's illustrate the desert landscape of Arizona using black pen and watercolor to draw the state that's filled with playful cacti.
Here are some simple ways to draw three types of cacti that you can use to fill in the state illustration.
Start by drawing Arizona's shape in black pen (waterproof ink) on watercolor paper. Fill in the entire state with cacti and paint in some quick color.
Now add more loose watercolor strokes to paint the sandy background color. I add some paint splatters for a little interest and texture.
Lastly, put the state name at the top.
COUNTRY ILLUSTRATION
Now commemorate a recent trip and illustrate a country you've visited or one that's on your bucket list! Use the techniques we've explored, or create your own. You can also denote where you traveled with a dot or star. Here's an illustration I created in colored pencil to celebrate a trip to Italy.
CHAPTER 6
Project 6: COLLECTIONS
So often on a trip I see just the big things: the landmarks, the parks, the museums. I come home with loads of photos, and a souvenir or two, but they never fully capture the memories of the trip. For this project, let's explore capturing those little details by pretending to be "scientific" illustrators and drawing the elements that represent the collective feelings of a travel experience.
Media: black pen & watercolor
CREATE A "SPECIMEN" COLLECTION
A trip to Hawaii, or any tropical setting, is one you'll never forget. The warm waters, the shells, the sweet fruit, the trade winds — there are so many things that make the tropics special. For this project, use vintage scientific illustrations as inspiration.
STEP 1: DISTRESS YOUR WATERCOLOR PAPER
To give the illustration a vintage feel, first apply a very light wash of brown on watercolor paper. Using a large brush, paint the entire page with water. Use enough water to make the paper visibly wet without pooling. Then lightly put your wet brush in brown watercolor, and dab the brush onto the wet paper. The color should bleed into the wet areas. Continue to add very light brown paint and water to get the desired effect.
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Instead of distressing paper with paint, you can also work on an old piece of paper that has yellowed or aged.
STEP 2: DRAW THE COLLECTION
Now it's time to use a waterproof black pen to draw the "specimens," or little things from Hawaii that make it so unique: a lava rock, a plumeria flower, a pineapple slice, a shell, a palm frond, a coconut, a fish, a tiki statue, and sand.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Anywhere, Anytime Art Illustration"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Betsy Beier.
Excerpted by permission of The Quarto Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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