The class project is divided into two parts; the Exercises and the Final Project. The Exercises helps you experience and practice drawing in the Two Modes (Observational and Ideational). The Final Project allows you to apply what you learned in the Exercises into a full-on illustration project — which is the ultimate purpose of all the techniques taught in Drawing Toward Illustration!

All steps are covered in the videos, but are summarized below.

THE EXERCISES

Exercise 1: The Chair
Draw a chair first from observation (Observational Mode), and then from heart (Ideational Mode).

Choose a chair from your home or a photo of one from the web.
Draw the chair from observation using the Contour Drawing techniques described in the class.
Next, put the chair or photo away and draw the chair only from memory (Ideation Mode), using the same Contour Drawing techniques. First draw the chair in the position/angle used for the first part.
Next, try drawing the chair in different angles but only from your imagination. The results may be surprising and even strange, but hopefully also turn out fun and whimsical!

Exercise 2: The Plant
Draw a houseplant first from observation (Observational Mode), and then from heart (Ideational Mode).

Choose a houseplant from your home or a photo of one from the web. Find one that has lots of interesting features — aim for something more complex; a fern, ficus or palm is better than a pear cactus, for instance.
Draw the plant from observation using contours. It may help to draw by looking at the plant about 80% of the time and only glancing at your page from time to time to make sure your pencil is still on your page! More important than drawing correctly is simply allowing your eye to trace every detail patiently and diligently. This will load up your brain with lots of information you will find useful in the next step.
Put the plant or reference away and draw it only from memory, (Ideation Mode), also using contours.
Feel free to iterate on your Ideational drawing to make the lines more stylized, clean, and confident.

Exercise 3: The Workspace
Draw your workspace first from observation (Observational Mode), and then from heart (Ideational Mode).

Position yourself in your workspace in order to see at least your work area and some of the surrounding features, such as your desktop, shelves, wall, decorative objects, and so on. You can also choose a photo of an interesting studio or workspace if you want.
Draw the workspace from observation using contours. Be prepared to spend more time on this, and allow yourself to really get into it. Set a timer for 20-40 minutes if it helps you concentrate. If you don’t know where to start, just start with whatever object is in the centre of your view and then draw the next thing beside it, and so on, until you have a satisfying amount of detail on the page.
Now put your reference away and draw the whole workspace as you remember it — no peeking at photos our looking up to see your workspace. See what you are able to remember and see what you have to make up instead — it will be fun to compare the Observational and Ideational (memory) drawings after to see what you got right and wrong!

Exercise 4: The Figure
Draw a human figure, first from observation (Observational Mode), and then from heart (Ideational Mode).

Find a wiling volunteer to sit still and model for 10-15 minutes as you draw them. You can also take a photo of yourself or find a photo of an interesting model online, or even use a mirror. Make sure the photo shows the full figure — head to toes.
Draw the figure using contours from observation/reference. Do your best not to get hung up on capturing likeness or adding too many details, especially in the face! Look for the most dominant lines and shapes of the figure and, to the best of your ability, put these down on the page. It’s not about being a great portrait, but simply about seeing — and “downloading” visual information about your subject that will be helpful in the next step.
Now, as usual, put your references away, or dismiss your model, and draw from Ideational mode, no peeking! Remember to use bold, confident contours and not sketchy, tentative lines. If you need to rough things in in this way at first, that’s fine — you can iterate over later with more confident strokes in a second pass. Have fun with this one — let weird things happen and just commit!

FINAL PROJECT

Objective
Create a full page illustrated scene of a workspace that includes the plant, the chair, and the figure (however loosely based) from the exercises. You should have a final illustration style in mind as you go through the project, as this should of course strongly influence how you develop your sketches.

The final project has three stages, each one iterating closer to the finished illustration.

Step 1: Rough Sketches
This is where we roughly map out our composition, remembering the 3 C’s of Sketching from the Primer lessons. We should end up with a sketch that has the major content blocked in where we think it will go in the final illustration. This may take a few tries, and that’s okay! However, having just drawn the chair, the plant, a human figure, and an entire workspace — twice — in the exercises, you should have all the visual information you need as a starting point, and to draw this from heart. The sketch at this stage might look messier than you’d like, and you may not have addressed more fine details — we’ll do this in the next stage.

Step 2: Refined Sketches
With the concept, composition and general concept in place, we can now refine the sketch so it is clearer. We can pay more attention to the finer details in this one. By the end of this stage, we should have a sketch that more clearly describes the image; there should be very few ambiguities. Imagine you are showing this to your client; if you think they would have any questions about what anything in the sketch might be, consider clarifying it. Avoid the temptation to add unnecessary shading or an appearance of volume, focusing on even clearer and cleaner contour lines to define each shape and line.

Step 3: Finished Artwork
Once you are satisfied with your refined sketch, it’s time to move it into the finished artwork! There are no rules at this point — you’ve done your job in the sketches and now it’s time to make it come alive in your style. Hopefully at this point you’ve considered the compatibility between your sketch and your desired illustration style, and now all that’s left to do is to make that transition happen.

If you need some style prompts, I have included them in the Class Project & Resources section of this class.

DELIVERABLES

Here are some key things you can share on your class project page.

For each Exercise:

Share your reference photo if available.
Share your drawings from both Observational Mode and Ideational Mode, as well as any additional drawings you did in either step.

For the Final Project:

Share your rough and refined sketches.
Share your final illustration!
If you want, describe your chosen tools and techniques and any challenges or thoughts of the process along the way.

FINAL ILLUSTRATION DETAILS

8 x 10 inches @ 300 dpi (portrait or landscape, your choice)
Can be full-bleed or be self contained

When posting, if you're stuck for a name for your project, I suggest just calling it [Your Name]’s Workspace.

If you share on Instagram, please tag @mrtomfroese in your post and use the hashtag #DrawingTowardIllustration!

I can't wait to see your Drawings and Final!

As always, if you have any questions or feedback about this class, please be sure to let me know in the Discussions section of this class.

DOWNLOADABLE CLASS RESOURCES

You will find on this page some downloadable resources for this class, including the same reference photos I use in my demos (with no apologies for the model ones!), and some Style Starting Points if you need some ideas for a final illustration style. (You should have an illustration style in mind before starting the final project, of course).

INSPIRATION

Here is an inspirational Pinterest board for your use and enjoyment.

FRAME MOCKUPS

Just for fun, you can try placing your finished illustration in a mocked up frame, magazine, or some other type of context. Here is one link but similar ones are available all over the web!

https://dribbble.com/bhony_bharath/projects/540453-Freebies

Matt Benson

UI/UX Creative & Developer

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