Chapter 3 bees (Deg Illustrations)

Blog posted by Ste Pickford on Thu, 20 Apr 2017

Overlaid on top of the background are a series of bees, crawling over everything. I did these as a separate layer, and only drew two, which I inked directly over the photo reference at the top left, then copy and pasted a few times around the image.

They’re not immediately obvious when you first look at the illustration. Well, I hope they’re not. I intended them to be something you’d only notice after staring at the drawing for a while, and they’d sort of pop into your consciousness and you’d realise there were loads of them crawling over everything, and feel all itchy and creeped out.

It was a bit of a struggle to avoid them blending in too much and not being visible at all, or looking like splodges of ink that shouldn’t be there. I ended up giving them both a white outline, then a further black outline around that, for the right balance between standing out and blending in. I was reluctant to use outlines if I could help it, as I hadn’t used them in any previous illustrations, but I ended up using a similar trick a few more times before the end.

Click the 'Follow up post' link below to see the finished illustration.

Click the 'Predecessor post' link below to see the pencil version.

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Tags: deg, chapter3, drawing, illustration, book, novel, ink, clip studio pro, bees

Follow up post: Chapter 3 Final (Deg Illustrations)

Predecessor post: Chapter 3 pencils (Deg Illustrations)

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