Animals with Verbs! Hedgehog with “Paste.”
This was an exciting one.
One of the whole reasons I found SVSlearn.com was from a question I asked in the 12×12 illustrators facebook page. I was trying to figure out how people came up with their backgrounds and scenes. I could rough in ideas for the characters, but the backgrounds were escaping me. The big problem with this is that I LOVE full backgrounds. I love cottages with all the little nooks and crannies filled with whimsical things. I love forests with all the creatures. I love cities with the communities.
And I had no idea how to even think of all those things that I wanted to add.
So, I found my way to SVSlearn.com. First I discovered a prop design class, and I have been meandering my way around ever since. In fact, Will Terry’s Draw 50 things (where you draw 50 things to go in a scene), is what set me off on my animal sketches. I wanted to draw a woodland scene, but didn’t know how to draw animals. So I figured I’d draw 20-30 poses of each animal. At the time, this was just the basic animal, tracing pictures and simplifying lines. Then I started learning about shading and colouring and wanted to try it out. So I picked one of those animals I’d been learning to draw, and sketched it up in a cute way. Verbs helped focus the task. Thus, my Animals with Verbs was started.
Now, back to my delight of the day.
I really wanted to draw the whole kitchen for this sketch.
Isn’t that awesome?!
I’ve gone from trying to ignore the background, to having to practice restraint to keep the picture in a simple style.
Instead, I focused on really trying to show off the verb, ‘paste.’ Initially he was really doing a careful little glueing job. But it almost looked like he was painting. So I tried making gluey strings and covering the little hedgehog with it:
He has a very important project.
Initial sketch:
Interesting. I think if I’d paid attention to my sketch, the picture would have been more balanced. I think I have a window to the left and the mom working at a desk to the right. At some point I switched it up to her doing dishes by a window, and it became very right heavy.
Just gotta keep learning!