Illustration as visual ideas
Today’s Prompt: N - Necromancer
We’re in the last week of this series 7 prompts left!
If you’re new, we’re drawing inspiration from ‘The Hobbit’, and have been doing so for 19 days out of a planned 26.
I started this series doing large marker drawings, and am ending it going back to my little black and white icons that I use as borders for this newsletter.
Illustration as visual ideas
Thinking of illustrations to be made up of icons, was one of the main ideas I needed to go from amateur to pro.
It marked a shift of focus.
I see the icons like words in a sentence.
Icons might be the words and the illustration is a sentence or a paragraph. I’m saying something specific with images, and my main task is to say it clearly. This can be done with the arrangement of the icons, but also the design of each icon.
I design the icon for today’s prompt to hint at the character and the thing I’m describing. I suppose the opposite would be focusing on realism or rendering… what I’m looking at is the visual design of an idea.
Here’s how I thought of the visual idea of today’s prompt
The shape is meant to resemble a tomb stone, his encircled hands in his robe hint at some dark magic, pointing along with his eyes at the ground, the face and beard again resemble a tombstone, and the bottom of the robes look like the whole character is sprouting out of the ground.
Have you ever thought of illustration like that before? Is it helpful? How do you think of illustration
TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT
N - Necromancer:
"We had to pay a visit to the giants' hall, and that's where we got into the tunnel, of which there is nothing standing but all full of goblins, and the Necromancer."
Gandalf recounts his journey to meet the Necromancer who most believe to be Sauron, from the Lord of the Rings.
On Sunday, I’ll be sharing YOUR renditions of the prompts for this week.
I tried my best to make the prompts tell a bit of the story and have some drama and progression, I hope you enjoyed that.
Hmm. I'm not sure what I draw is iconic but perhaps I interpret the word differently. My drawing for this prompt has hints and symbolism. For instance, his robes are white as he wants to give the appearance of good. But his face is shadowed indicating he's hiding something. I tried to make his eyes deep and dark like a skeleton's and his robe has a scull emblem. The shadows of his inner sleeves could indicate the hands coming from them are doing something sinister.