I pivoted in the middle of the project to a whole different subject altogether.

But first, let's go through the process.

6 thumbnails

Here are the 6 thumbnails. I liked the S curve of the 5th thumbnail, so I developed it further.

Birdie's... gone! - image 1 - student project

Colour thumbnails (and testing hue variations)

Here I was making colour thumbnails to test colour variations. Unknowingly I also did a colour palette on the side, testing which colours from all my swatches in Procreate would go well together. I was trying to decide on a blue, yellow (because the blue tit bird has those colours), but also green for the two leaves and brown for the tree trunk.

Birdie's... gone! - image 2 - student project

Redoing the outline (and pivoting away from the bird because of the body twist)

After deciding on the colours, I enlarged the thumbnail and tried to retrace a nice outline. But I was struggling to keep the S shape of the bird. I couldn't figure out how to make the body and the tail.

That's when I gave up on the bird idea and changed the character to be a cat! It can't just be a cat on a tree randomly, it needs a story. So it could either be stuck in the tree, unable to get down or doing some misdeeds over there. Hence, I went with the second idea.

Each colour block on a separate layer (to help with shading)

I followed the instructions and found them really useful. Initially, I put all the coloured blocks (cat, tree, leaves) on one layer, which didn't allow for Alpha Lock and shading within those constraints.

So I selected each form ("Automatic" and place the prompt on what colour you want to select) and separated them in different layers, with a bit of cleaning up.

This image shows:

chosen colour palette
grayscale value check
shading applied (I preselected the areas I wanted to shade to have control over the form - a trick I learned from Jarom Vogel)

Birdie's... gone! - image 3 - student project

And in colour, the finished illustration with the palette on the side. I didn't end up using the purple, red and others, but it was good to have.

Birdie's... gone! - image 4 - student project

And ta-da, the final image, for a sense of finalisation.

Birdie's... gone! - image 5 - student project

Corina Matei

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