from pencil drawing, to digital illustration
This was a personal project that I took on in the summer of 2022. It was just after my mother had passed away and I needed some art therapy. I started out by sketching a fairly detailed fawn. Drawing has always been therapy for me, and allows me to put my emotions somewhere useful. I was feeling a mix of emotions I had never experienced.
In order to capture what I was feeling, I needed this
illustration to have come contradiction. In contrast to
the soft innocence of the fawn and the delicate flowers, I added sharp, harsh lines jutting out from every direction behind the fawn. This juxtaposition represents my love for my mother being rendered a sharp, pain inflicting object by my grief. It also created some nice texture and movement in the illustration. The lines direct the eye to the fawn and give the viewer something to think about when viewing the piece. I started the project in grayscale and then added the colors once the vectors were complete.
Fawn sketched with graphite pencil on 11 x 14 paper
Digital illustration completed in Adobe Illustrator 18 x 24
original sketch
While I always wanted this project to be a digital illustration, I didn't want to rely on someone else's photography to provide a guide for my artwork. I created this pencil drawing to serve as a tracing image to import into Illustrator. I find sketching things out in this organic way improves my digital artwork and ensures what I'm creating is completely original. I also find that shading with pencil is a great way to provide a template for those vector shades I want to achieve digitally.
see more of my process
Check out a few behind-the-scenes videos on my TikTok or Instagram!