Miruna Popescu Illustration: colored pencil illustrator

Showing posts with label colored pencil illustrator. Show all posts

The Witcher Fan Art

I saw Netflix's The Witcher over Christmas and it was really nice so I made some fan art. I worked on an A4 size for this one and used the Sonnet russian watercolor set and Polychromos colored pencils.

January 2020

First traditional drawings of the year:

Red Veggies

This vegetable series began this spring, first as a relaxation from the Indesign work I was doing as my day (and sometimes night) job, then more diligently as I had more free time (like the 6 peppers one).
The first two are done only using colored pencil while the rest also have a watercolor base. They are quite small, except for the last, more medium sized one.

The idea was to create a collection for my Etsy shop as well. I've always found red to be a very stimulating color, so maybe I overused in an attempt to feel more fresh, haha.

The technique is still the same, a light sketch, which I erase, only leaving a hint on the paper. Then slowly adding color, until I've reached the darkest shade from the reference photo.

Maybe the most important part is the years of drawing practice beforehand and attempting with each drawing to understand how to suggest the volume of something, the diligent study of the way light and shadow rest on things. And even exagerating sometimes, like making slightly darker outlines so the shape will pop more in constrast to the white of the page.

The scanning and cleaning process are very important as they contribute to this as well. I usually do it using polygonal lasso in Photoshop with a grey layer underneath so I don't leave any old paper undeleted. Then I replace that layer with pure white.

Women's Day 2019 Illustration

This was a fortunate accident, that I decided to make this strawberry illustration just before Women's Day. Lately I've been dabbling in food illustration, mostly fruits and vegetables for now.

This was also the first time I had used a refillable water brush, and while I'm not such a fan of sinthetic brushes, it really did help speed up the process. Of course I added color pencil on top, in an attempt to make it even more realistic. This succeded, altough it did take away from the freshness the watercolor alone provided. The ones I'm most proud of are probably the last set, on the lower right corner.

M.

Chill Sunday

This was my attempt to make a more children's illustration inspired image, but with scenes that portray grown-ups. I don't know if I'd continue using this style,but it was a fun exercise.

If one day I'd illustrate a children's book maybe I could look back to it for reference.

Speaking of which, I didn't use any reference for this, just a simple sketch from my imagination, that I redrew a couple of times, and then colored.

The idea is that of Small Daily Scenes, and it goes together with the Valentines one.

Valentine's Day 2019

The idea for this fun cute illustration of a couple's dinner date came after a nice weekend spent with the boyfriend, and I was just randomly doodling in the sketchbook.

It's made entirely with colored pencils, and the focus was more on the style rather than the idea (now as I'm writing this a few months later I'm discovering that maybe it should be the other way around - a powerful image needs more message. The depth here would be greater if this were included in some sort of a visual diary, or if the proportions of the characters was more that of adults maybe).

I was also inspired by German storybook illustrator Eve Tharlet, in particular the way she draws the eyes and makes people's heads bigger.

Children's Illustration - December 2018

Portrait of a Caroler

These drawings were made as an exercise to see how I would approach the illustration style of a storybook. It's one of my wishes to illustrate one some day and I had some free time before Christmas to play around with some watercolor and colored pencil.

These were made mostly from imagination, but I did use some reference for the iceskating one and the four carolers, I did have some trouble with the latter one as I feel the color cheme could have been different or narrowed down to a smaller palette with one or two tones. As you can see, I still have a fondness for lettering and doodling words around my drawings.