How to Make an Illustration ... Part 1

Thought it would be fun to show some behind-the-scenes tricks of the trade for a new illustration I created for Geox shoes and Hong Kong's MilkX Magazine (out in their May 2014 issue!).  Here's Step 1 - lots of reference photos (the Spring 2014 collection from Geox), lots of brainstorming, and lots of sketching!  (I'm cheating a little here, since I didn't show you all the crappy sketches that came before my almost-final versions of the sketches depicted below.) Nevertheless, hopefully these unedited drawings give you an idea of how everything looks before I use Photoshop to stitch numerous drawings together, tidy them up, and add in all the color.

Stay tuned for more in this series! I'll show you how the rest of the illustration developed.

This is what happens when you want to draw something that's bigger than your scanner! For me, I scan my A3 drawing in two pieces (veryyy carefully) and then stitch the two scans together in Photoshop. I had to make a few edits to the initial illustration, so here's a peek at some figures and extra bits I added in later to make the drawing more playful and spring-inspired!