Your ideas illustrated. The creative journey of a commission.

I feel very honoured when someone contacts me with their creative thoughts and ideas, which we then work through together and turn into a personal bespoke illustration for them. I thought that sharing the journey of a commission may be of interest to anyone pondering over this as an idea for themselves, as a gift or to remember someone by.

It all begins with an idea. Your idea. Perhaps it’s lots of ideas you have swimming around in your head, and you’re not sure how to articulate them. It might be a description of someone very dear to you; their favourite things, some happy memories, an object that has a particular meaning or representation of someone for you. It could be something simple. This is my initial doodle for Boo’s Toyshop recently; they asked me to design some banners (a logo which you click on that represents a category of their shop) for their website and the brief was fairly straight forward for this one “Stocking Fillers”. I had previously worked with Boo’s on a commission for Remembrance Sunday so I was beginning to become familiar with their website, branding and the feel they like for their toyshop. Their logo is a penguin, so you can see here that I’ve popped it onto a stocking full of special presents.

After running this initial doodle past Boo’s, I started to finesse the sketch. You can see here more clearly Boo’s toyshop penguin logo, worked into a Nordic style stocking, with candy canes, wrapped presents and a toy whale which is one of the toys they sell. Of course it’s all finished off with some sparkling stars!

At this point it’s one last run past the client and discuss any particular colour ways or themes they would like to use, and then all being well I’m good to get painting!

Paints at the ready! This is a very therapeutic part of the process for me. I use watercolour paints, and then depending on the subject / colour scheme I work over the top with ink or pencil to fine tune any details. For Boo’s I used ink throughout.

The last stage of this stocking design for Boo’s was done on the computer. I scanned in my illustration, tidied up any edges or accidental slips of the pen / brush (it is tricky to stay within the lines! It happens to the best of us!).

I use Photoshop to tweak the brightness of the image and make sure that it is looking it’s best.

So there you have it, the journey of a commission! You can see some of my other commissions here.

Please do get in touch if you have an idea for some artwork or an illustration which you have in mind but just can’t seem to find anywhere. We can work through your ideas, and I’ll keep you updated at each stage. Email me here.