Hi Reader !

I hope you had a great weekend!

I'm really excited about today: we have a brand new illustration to cover, with an interesting story and some nerdy drawing stuff, but most importantly we also gonna have a look at my art project for the coming month!

Enjoy :)
And thank you for being here ❤️

"Fallen Light 🌠"

You can watch a timelapse right here !

How the idea came to be

After dusting off the sand from our feet, we sat down inside to enjoy some fresh air coming from the AC. I was in vacation with my siblings and my girlfriend, at a calm and beautiful Mediterranean beach. But after having had some fun we needed some time to relax and do nothing.

That's when my girlfriend kindly lent me her sketchbook so that I could draw; mine couldn't fit in my bag, so we left it home. I decided to make an illustration in one her page, to thank her.

And that's how this first sketch came to be!

Someone finding a fallen star, that's actually my girlfriend who inspired this concept.

She has a lot of connection to the astral; she for example has her first memory be of a shining light that she passed through to join this world.

Factually, I'm not sure where this memory comes from, but I find it really poetic.

There was also this German animated movie when I was a kid, "Laura's Star", about a little girl who pick up and help a fallen star. I've never actually watched the movie, but I remember seeing the advertisements and it stuck in my subconscious since then.

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Me and my girlfriend both got lifted from a pretty bad place when we met each other, so this idea of picking a star from the ground is really meaningful to me.

You'll notice that even on the ground, the star is still shining ✨

I later decided to make a digital version, but after a few attempts I decided to redo the composition entirely so that it's more visually impacting and interesting:

Making the background more open and clear, clarifying the silhouette of the character, adding fun details here and there...

"How can I make this more interesting?" is a question that I focus a lot on since I started drawing illustrations last year; and it has been absolutely transforming for my art.

So after a few sketches here it is!

How I transform a work in progress into a finished illustration without drawing anything new

Last issue we had a deep dive into the way that I think of the composition, but today I wanted to focus on the very finishing touch; which can have the most significant impact on the piece.

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Once I'm done with the shading, the piece looks almost done, everything is certainly there, but it lacks punch and atmosphere.

This is something you can fix with better colors and shading, those are important, but I also like to finally switch off my brush tool and instead use the good old gradient!

Gradients in my illustrations have generally 3 purposes:

1) Capture the eyes

Like I talked about last time, blocking the corners and border of an image is something I pay close attention to. I do that by placing objects and lines, but adding a little bit of gradient is also very useful to frame the composition; it's all about putting everything together!

2) Convey light

I love cell-shaded light and shadow, but I have to admit that they are better with a bit of support to make them look convincing. I even feel like the contrast between a hard edge and a gradient makes both of them shine.

For this purpose, you'll always see me using gradients for the sky because it's the most effective place to convey a soft light; but here you can also see that the grass at the feet of the hiker has a bright green gradient; it both makes the character more distinct but also supports the light of the torch.

3) Separate planes

With flat colors and constant brush size like I use, it's really easy to mess up the clarity of the piece and have everything looking flat.

So what I love to do between the foreground and background is to add a bit of gradient shadow to make them stand out from each other. Here you can see it with the mountains in the distance, which I obviously didn't want to look too close. It's often barely visible but has a very big role in creating depth.

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These finishing touches close the gap between an illustration that feels okay and one that feels great; and yet, they can be done with just a few additional layers, without actually drawing anything.

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Finding my next move: My project for Inktober 2024

Since the past year, I've been extremely focused on creating better and better illustration; but as I stated in an article recently, I really feel the need now to direct this energy towards a finished project.

I'm already working on a silly game called "Hi, Welcome to Froggy's"; it's about surviving the night shift in a local grocery store, something that was inspired by my own past experience as a night worker.

And while it's been fun and I've made some good progress recently, I also want to prioritize putting more things into the world; things that would interest more people and not take forever to create.

So with Inktober and NaNoWriMo coming up, I decided to use both of these challenges to try my hand at a long dream of mine: making a book!

More exactly, a short book, around 30 pages, with illustrations. While I've made little comics in the past, here I want to have something closer to an illustrated novel or children's book, so that it's easier to draw and edit.

Since I've got this idea, I've finished to outline a complete plot with all the illustrations needed; 15 in total!

Here are some sketches I already made for the first eight pages:

This story stars Susie as the main character; a joyful little girl that I've used in several projects and illustrations already. She has to survey a lot of people for a school project, and that will lead her into some pretty strange places and company :)

This is gonna be a short and sweet story, and I hope it will make you smile!

My plan is to draw the illustrations - either inked or as a detailed sketch - during the month of October, and then writing the text the next month to then finally bring everything together in a finished form.

I will of course keep you up to date with my progress!

Doing something like this, and especially being public about it this early on, is very scary. But I feel like I'm in a place in my life where I can trust myself and go through with this project, even if it's very modest.

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This is it for today! Please stay tuned for next week, as I will both share some more art, but also contacting the lucky winner of the first print giveaway!! I’m super excited to do this :))

Until then, please take care!
- Nighten