"I work with what I have around me." - Thaís Suizo
Today I'm going to show you a little bit about how I work with the sketches I send to David for approval.
The first step is to put the book's dimensions on a sheet of printer paper, since I'm developing the illustrations for the Let's Meditate Series in the original size the books are being printed. I also put a line down the center and some lines on the sides that act as an imaginary border for me, since there's a "bleed" where the edges will be trimmed when printing the books.
On this page I'm designing, David talks about energy and how all religions recognize energy as something real and a fundamental element of their faith. So I thought about working with different colors to represent this diversity of understanding of Energy. I still don't have practically anything formed in my mind, I just know that I want a circle in the center of this illustration and a person in a meditative position inside it.
So, to make the circle, I'm going to use a bowl and draw around it. I really like to pick up objects that are around me and use them to solve what I need in my art; I've been doing this since I was a child.
Then I draw a few more baselines. I want to draw the person sitting, seen from the side in a meditative position. Then I shape this drawing with the pencil, sometimes it's necessary to erase many times, it's not magic, even though I've been drawing since I was a child.
Now that the idea is finalized, I want to transfer it all to another paper and remove all those lines, but without losing the measurements I took.
To transfer the drawing to another piece of paper, I have two options, either I use carbon paper, or today, since it's a sunny day here, I use the glass from my balcony window.
Now, that I have the final drawing completed and without any marking lines, I'll take a picture or scan it to send to David and see if he likes the idea.
As you can see, the final sketch I'm going to send to David is very simple. This ends up being a process that requires a lot of confidence, because even I don't know for sure what will happen when I start adding the colors. I keep rereading the text and letting it flow.
I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about the development process of the Let's Meditate Series illustrations, and I'll be showing you more soon.
A warm hug from Brazil,
Thaís Suizo