Welcome to the first installment of my Newsletter Club :)

Hi Reader! I'm super excited to have you here. You're one of the very first person to subscribe, and I appreciate it deeply. As promise, today I'm gonna dive into my latest illustration and what goes into making something like this!

"Make the World your Party"

You can watch the timelapse video here!

How the idea came to be

The basic premise of this illustration was to do my take on a trope I noticed while looking for reference: the character facing back from the camera in front of a big landscape, usually a city.

And my idea was simply, why not use the same premise but in nature, with a bit of my personal touch (i.e. cables and antennas). I love the juxtaposition of nature and technology, and so I thought it would be a great idea to explore

Here's the very first sketch I did:

It was on the 24th of August, I was spending the Saturday afternoon in a café where I got a lot of different ideas for illustrations.

You can see that a few things have changed! I flipped the composition and moved things around; and the character at the center isn't holding cables but a simple bag.

This is the type of things that comes up as I'm drawing: I'm getting further into the story and ask myself question to push the concept further.

Self Reference (I love those)

Whenever I can, I love to older elements of my illustration or creative life into new pieces. It's fun and I think it gives a wholeness my collection of artworks, I'm creating my little universe.

The most obvious one is probably this building, directly taken from another illustration I did at the beginning of the year.

The building itself is actually based on a real one, but I sadly lost the reference originally used; I think it is located in a park in Spain. Maybe I'll find it again some day!

This bobtail cat is also from another illustration, a style exercise with cats called "Kotku" (which is how you call a little cat in Polish! A language I'm currently learning)

Finally, the title is a reference from one of my favorite artwork, "Make the World your Garden" :)

Composition breakdown

Alright buckle up, we are about to get a little technical!

Composition is something I pay a lot of attention to since I've started drawing full illustrations; this one isn't the best in that regard, but I wanted to share with you a little explanation about how I approached it this time.

Most of what I care about is lines, and how they can help the viewer navigate around the illustration. Here's some guide I drew after the fact:

The blue lines represent the main movement across the piece. Those are generally my main focus, as I want to help guide the viewer through the composition; I didn't draw all of them here for clarity, but I'm sure you can see other things that align in the same movement.

The green is to show how the main point of interest connect together. I don't usually do it this way but I wanted to experiment with this piece (I still have a lot to learn!)

Last but not least, the orange line is here to "frame" the composition, or as I like to say trapping the eye so it doesn't go out. You'll notice that I always make sure to "close" at least the bottom corners of my illustrations, either with a object or simply with shadows. I have found that it greatly improve a piece, and it's not hard to do once you keep it in mind!

(my girlfriend is telling me this is called a closed composition when there is a frame created this way!)

What I'm working on next

I always have a ton of sketches on my todo list, here are some I'm excited about!

Can you spot one you'd like to see?

As I'm working full time I'm not sure when the next illustration will be ready; either this week or the one after. Either way, you gonna receive it in your inbox once it's ready!

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And that's it for today!

Thank you for reading this very first issue ! As I said at the beginning, I'm gonna pick a random member by the beginning of October; and that lucky person will be able to choose any artwork that I have in stock to call theirs.

So once again make sure to watch your inbox :)

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Take care, and thank you for being here!
- Nighten