Every print I design starts with a hand drawing – you see why I named the business Drawn by Rhiannon right? I always like to have either a photo of the item I’m drawing or the actual item in front of me so I can get all the proportions and colours spot on. Luckily I had a few bananas in the fruit bowl so it was off to a good start.
If you read my last blog post you’ll know that I have a particular style in mind for this print design which starts with a thick pencil drawing. I tend to like to draw lots of scruffy lines in light pencil to begin with and then go over the best lines with a thicker pencil when I’m happy with the shape.
The next stage is digitising the sketch to get it ready to make into a digital print. Some sketches translate better than others and luckily the bananas were one of the easier drawings; just a bit of tidying up around the edges and removing the sketchbook seam line and it was ready to go!
With the outline sorted it’s time to start on the colour. I use all sorts of different materials for colouring but I’ve decided to use watercolours for the fruit print range. I love how the colours blend so well and show a great range of tone and light with a few brush strokes.
After scanning it in to the computer and defining the colours, it’s ready to be dropped into the outline image.
With a few layers and lots of blending, the colouring-in is complete! I’m super chuffed with the colour effect created by the watercolour paints, but let me know what you think by commenting below.
I think this technique is really effective. You get the sense of the different shades and textures of the bananas. Looking forward to seeing the completed print!
I’m glad you like it! I have to say I was really pleased with the result, I’ve been wanting to try it for a while but didn’t have quite the right design for it, but I think it works really well on the bananas 🙂