First off, I'd just like to say how much I enjoyed this class. I'm fairly new to digital illustration, and have been intimidated trying to create balanced scenes. I loved watching Iva's process (she makes it look so easy!). Planning ahead using tiny thumbnails and experimenting with colour palettes has been a game changer, and I fully intend to use this process in all of my future illustrations.

For my class project, I created a funny winter scene with a cat who's knocked the head off a snowman. First, I quickly sketched out a couple of ideas:

Mikles Composition - image 1 - student project

You can see I used the "diamond" shape in the first image. I didn't like the big shapes created in the background, so I tried again, experimenting with leading lines to create a triangle between the cat, the snowman's head and a little bird flying overhead. The purple lines show where I used leading lines (the fence, the descending line of trees and the big tree branches) to try and lure the viewer's eyes towards the main focus of the image:

Mikles Composition - image 2 - student project

I added negative space in the sky and snow surrounding my characters. I was tempted to fill up these spaces with objects, clouds, etc, but adding that space gives the illustration some breathing room, and further focuses the eye towards the main characters.

Next, I played around with a few different colour palettes:

Mikles Composition - image 3 - student project

I loved all three, but decided to stick with palette #2. The cool greens and blues felt more wintery (which explains why the cat stole the cozy scarf in the first place!), and I think the orange scarf grabs your attention more than the cherry scarf against the pink. I'd never considered the importance of using colour to create/enforce a story - so, this was really fun!

Just to double check my values, I converted my colour thumbnails to black and white:

Mikles Composition - image 4 - student project I used the trick of zooming out and squinting to see if my illustration was still clear and made sense. I went back and adjusted the colours, making the bushes at the front lighter, etc.

Once I was happy, I imported thumbnail #2 into a new canvas, enlarged it and cleaned it up:

Mikles Composition - image 5 - student project

I've spent the last few days trying to colour this thing, but it's harder than it looks! I'll be sure to post my finished illustration when I'm done ;)

Jennifer Wang

artist | designer

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