My illustration process-traditional to digital art.

When a concept for a drawing appears I first draw on any piece of paper I have near me. I know that images in my mind change or evolve so quickly that I just have to rush to get the idea down. Sometimes images take even weeks to come together but Lars's descriptions in his book are so inspiring that I need to get the images down quickly as they come.

Quick monster sketch on paper

This could mean drawing on a paper towel or note paper or on my sketchbook, whatever is closest to me at the time.

Niels original sketch

My mind races with ideas and images all day and the images change so fast that it sometimes drives me crazy and I worry I will miss a valuable illustration.

Building sketch for Christmas Peace

When I was young I could draw fine details in very small illustrations, especially all over my school books much to my teachers frustrations. But now I have trouble seeing and so the traditional method of drawing and painting are difficult for me. This is why I convert rough sketches to digital and work on my iPad. This makes it so much easier for me to see even down to see even pixel by pixel if needed.

Bibi illustrating Christmas Peace on the ipad.

This also allows me to work in layers, see how many strokes I have made per illustration and the time it took. Though with my old iPad there are not enough layers and so I have to keep combining the layers in a new document which then I lose the ability to go back to work on new details in old layers.

Working in layers allows me to test positioning of characters and other illustrative details.

Close up of details in Laerke's bedroom.

When you zoom in on an image it will look like a mess, this is very surprising when you first see it but it is the same with every illustration throughout history if you looked through a magnifying glass or microscope on a small section of a drawing. This is why using an iPad using Procreate software helps me. Also, I transfer the images to another software Affinity publisher and Designer to create pdfs to send to Lars for approval and if I need to add extras that I can't draw on the iPad.

Every image like Photos, animation, images you see on the internet and cartoons are digital. Disney artists initially used traditional methods to create illustrations but to make them into a movie they had to be photographed and turned into a digital form. Since then Disney animation studios have used utilized technological advances to create the artwork for their animated movies to speed up the process and also to create bigger and better quality animations.

I like both traditional and digital methods of illustrating as they both have their functions, benefits and drawbacks. What do you think?

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