Lost in the Jungle: Micro-lesson and Sketchbook Project.
Framing picture-stories
Every week, I have 2-3 ideas of what the project might be, then I open the sketchbook and see what comes out. The preceding pages are what came out and are the inspiration for the project.
Helllooo! I’m Adam Ming, recently (at 40), I jumped into my dream job of being a picture book illustrator, and it is a DREAM of a job.
Once a week I send you a FREE letter that has a Micro-lesson, and a Sketchbook project that you can work on for the whole week (10 minutes a day). This is said letter!
If you have leanings towards a creative dream job - This is the place to start! Or It’s a place to play!
It’s 100% Free. (And there’s an upgrade to get ALL the THINGS)
Micro-lesson:
If you are or ever become a Children’s Book Illustrator. Or an illustrator of any kind, you will notice two things.
Character is the most important thing
You will be drawing a lot of foliage.
Foliage is a great way to fill space, lead the eye of the viewer and add interesting visual clues about the environment. Having the ability to draw interesting foliage enables you to complete scenes quite easily.
Let’s say you draw a mouse on a page, you can easily turn that into a scene by adding foliage all around.
Foliage Arrangement
I think of filling a page with foliage like flower arrangement. And I dry to select the right kind of shape to fill the space, here are the kinds of thought I have when drawing foliage.
I need some round leaves so this doesn’t feel threatening
I can add sharp grass to show danger
I need a bigger shape here
Maybe I can overlap that with some thinner branches
I can add a fern here to lead the eye
Building a Library
Artist tend to develop a visual style of drawing foliage.
Get inspiration from them, but more importantly, look at nature and try to interpret the most mundane and simple grasses or plants as interesting shapes and icons.
I like to divide my sketchbook spreads into two.
The left page for notes or studies and the right page for the final picture, you can do something similar ‘collect’ your different foliage icons on one page and use them on another.
Sketchbook Project
Draw a page that includes a simple subject, surrounded by foliage. The subject could be an animal or an object, it can be something you drew in previous spreads, the point is to have something for the foliage to work around.
Study Artisans
Study the use of foliage in various products:
Fabric
Fashion
Ceramic
Architecture
Movie Stills
Coffee Art
It’s everywhere!
Write out the lessons from each in your own words,
e.g: “Use Bold Florals”, or “Mix thick and thin shapes” etc.
Study Nature
You can take photos of grass, leaves and branches.
Or you can just pay attention to what you see in nature and aim to draw them at a later time. This translation from observation to memory back to the page often yields very interesting results.
Final Instructions
Choose either the same subject, or different subjects for each page.
Choose either to have the subject entered or always in a different location on the page.
Making those choices upfront will set up a cohesiveness and maybe even a narrative for the whole project.
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See you in the gallery and if you post on social use the #TenMinuteArtist so we can find each other, and when you do find the others, say hi, and something nice about their work. It’s a creat way to make creative friends on the internet
Take a look of some of the work from last week’s gallery. Say hi to your fellow Ten Minute Artists!