Hand Illustration Process Video

Hey Guys!

Be sure to turn on the sound for this one 🤙

Here is a step by step progress video on how I build illustrations in general.

This is just one of many ways on how to do it, so don't get too hung up on the process. :)

1 - Sketch Sketching is my favorite part, here are a few things I've learned from other people that's helped me a lot.

1 - Draw with your arm/elbow, not your wrist. 2 - Draw zoomed out, don't draw up close. 3 - Long, fast and confident strokes. 4 - Use reference images 5 - Don't scribble!

2 - Blocking out Shapes This is the part where you go from seeing a fun/cool looking sketch to getting somewhat demotivated based of how it's turning out, but don't despair, keep pushing pixels. Block out your shadows, highlights, and main color using grayscale to ensure your drawing having good values. (Light and Darkness).

3 - Color Time to apply colors. This is the part where you need to be a little bit careful as colors can make or break your piece quite easily.

- Be sure to maintain the value of the grayscale block out when applying colors. This helps maintain good contrast. - Use darker and brighter colors that match your base color, meaning since we're using a somewhat orange/white color for the hand be sure to use a dark brown for shadows and yellow for highlights. Don't use black and white. - Play with different color palettes, don't just go with the first and best.

04 - Blending This is when you start blending/rendering the shadows and highlights making it merge a bit more with your base shape.

- Add gradient fades to your highlights and shadows. - You can also blur out your shadows and highlights, for this piece however, I only added blur to the highlights.

05 - Refine This is an important step that a lot of people overlook. It's essentially adding in a lot of small detail that just makes your piece look a lot sharper and feel more "complete"

- Add darker lines here and there to emphasize creases, curves, and overall shapes. Goes for both highlights and shadows.

06 - Supporting elements Having just the hand as the main object in there makes it kinda boring, so add in elements to compliment your focal point.

07 - Noise / Grunge Noise and Grunge are great ways to add subtle but interesting detail. This could probably be tucked in with the refinement stage but I like to do this towards the end to have more control.

Hope this helps you! Let me know if you like these kinda posts and I'll drop some more of them.

Cheers!