I would love to hang out with this little guy…

So a few people have asked me how I go about doing an illustration, and I thought I’d show a basic step-by-step of a recent project I worked on — inspired by my high school friend Shelley, who wanted a jungle illustration for her newborn daughter’s nursery.

Yes, I do some old-school sketching with pen and paper, but this is usually only when I brainstorm late at night. I always do the actual illustrations digitally; I haven’t scanned doodles in years. So for this project, I put down this layer of sketched outlines first:

To do this, I used my new Cintiq (which I’m sure some of you are tired of hearing me rave about!) so it was just a matter of putting pen to screen. For this illustration, I worked solely with Corel Painter — which is amazing in tandem with Wacom pens and tablets; a wide array of lifelike media, paper textures, amazing pen tilt and pressure sensitivity… It plain rocks.

Next, I laid down some general background colours:

Like other graphics programs, Painter has layers and I use them as I build up the levels of background to foreground. Next came the general colouring of the rest of the illustration, including the animals:

And then come all the details, highlights, and beefing up some of the outlines… and ta-daaahhh:

The graphic at the very top of this post is a close-up of the monkey, and shows the texture of the drawing and lines.

The “Welcome to the Jungle” illustration is at the giclée printers as I type, and I should have the final 8″ x 10″ prints next week. Of course, I was so freakin’ excited about these guys that I already have the print listed in my shop, ready to be snapped up and hung on nurseries all around the world!

You can see all my giclée prints here.

etsy.com, general rambling animals, cintiq, Corel Painter, giclee, illustration, jungle, monkey, wacom