The design idea of illustration-How to design creative illustration?

How to draw linear illustration landscape from scratch? Look at the master's summary of design ideas! If we have been studying lines, we will find that lines can not only represent the iconic individuals we see in ordinary daily life, but also represent larger and more complex landscapes. But the latter will be more difficult, especially if the lines are thick, and it is impossible to better express the details (such as clouds or catkins floating in the air). At that time, I was a little stuck in this train of thought and made no progress.

After two days, I suddenly got inspiration out of thin air and thought of the road to simplification. Try to simplify the method, although it looks rough, but it has entered a new level. I don't think we should just create scenery, but convey it. So the scenery is developed step by step with the combination of lines and color blocks.

The source of inspiration

So I have a mirror image of this group of works. This group of works is mainly composed of thick lines and scenery, with emphasis on "color" (gradient combination).

Tip:

This operation pays attention to the process of design thinking and does not involve the specific details of the software operation. If you are not familiar with the software operation, you can move here to watch this simple and quick operation video of AI.

△ Four ways to get shapes: spelling, subtracting, cutting and drawing.

Referencing photos does not mean copying photos.

The drawing of position needs to be very general. Because our plan here is to draw the scenery in a small rectangular box, in fact, the space is very limited. So the setting of lines will tend to be simple.

Simplification is a very important idea. You can start your research with photos. Of course, when I was creating, I didn't just borrow one photo, but combined several photos for reference.

Refer to the layout, composition and perspective in the photo to refine the most basic shape.

If you are interested, you can watch the following video:

△ How did the inspiration come from? Some skills of referring to photos

Construct basic lines

If the details are not cumbersome, the simplified pattern can be represented by a grid. Of course, it depends on your habits.

Step 0 1

Open AI and create a new document of 1600* 1600px. Draw a rounded rectangle in this document, and then lay out in this rounded rectangle. First, outline the largest basic shape with a few lines. The outer frame line is 30px, and the inner line can be slightly reduced to 25px, and then reduced to 20px.

The principle of setting the line thickness is to make the line follow a certain sense of rhythm, such as a multiple of 5.

Patterns set up the whole picture like building blocks.

Second step

Continue to fill the picture of the building on the left with the logic of building blocks. At this time, we should learn to jump out of the "technical" thinking level, which I repeatedly emphasized to the students in my teaching experience: we are not learning how to draw this object, for example, we draw a small town landscape here. What we have learned is the creative thinking behind it.

Here I quote a sentence from Feng Zikai in his book Understanding Painting:

"Pictures are like math and sports. Life doesn't have to draw apples, bananas, vases and teapots. It turned out that it was only through this kind of research that people's eyes were trained to be correct, sensitive, true and beautiful. 」

Used here, it is to train your line modeling ability by drawing towns and buildings. This ability not only conforms to the shape of the building, but also makes it look beautiful and natural.

Step 03

Going on is to optimize our shape again. You need to pay attention to two aspects when optimizing the shape:

Are shape joints closed?

Is the overall shape uniform?

These are macro and micro directions. Then adjust the shape of addition and deletion appropriately.

Step 04

Adding details is usually the last step in the framework work. At this time, we have to switch to another angle: at first, we regard the function of lines as establishing contours. At this time, it is necessary to describe the details with lines. Take an apple for example, and you will understand. The two functions of lines: sketch and painting, can be reflected here.

So the details added here (windows, doors, waves, seabirds, etc. ) are used to describe lines.

At this point, our contour line is completed. At this time, you can extend their appearance.

In many logo designs, this step can actually be ended, because most flat-style logos only need an outline, and the color can be random monochrome.

Color frame

Building a color frame is actually looking for an angle to observe color. Use the relationship between two colors to evolve into a color array. In the video below, you can learn more about color arrays.

△ color array: a color frame diagram for beginners.

Step 0 1

Based on the above theory, I got this color array. Our colors start here. The main color is determined to be blue (inspired by our photos), and the secondary colors are pink and mint green.

Second step

Of course, the function of color array is not to let us use all colors, but to simplify them according to the actual situation. Keep trying key colors to find the best combination.

Use the Shape Builder tool to color and assign main colors.

Step 03

Continue to use a color mint green. At this time, everyone should pay attention to the subtle changes in color. Everything looks perfect when a single color appears. Once the second color is added, the situation becomes complicated.

This is the same as our usual life. When a person is alone, everything is fine, and two people will have interpersonal relationships. The complicated relationship that makes people feel headache and happy brings more vitality and ups and downs.

We see that although we use secondary colors, it also brings more color changes to some color blocks, which can be easily done with color arrays.

Step 04

The third color is red, which we can continue to use in graphics.

Step 05

The main colors are controlled in three kinds, and the remaining colors can be fine-tuned on the basis of the existing colors, such as adjusting the lightness or saturation of the colors to obtain more delicate changes.

Note the use of white here.

Light and shadow gradient

Thanks to the light, we saw different colors. According to this truth, gradient is also a very important coloring element in order to obtain a richer sense of light.

Step 1

Before using the gradient, my suggestion is to do a flat coating first. Flat painting is to establish the overall color balance, and then fine-tune it according to the lighting conditions.

For the gradient, we need to be restrained, just choose one of the colors, and then fine-tune it in this narrow color range. For example, here we use a gradient red to make some subtle red changes.

Second step

Then add shadows to the building, and the appearance of shadows is arranged according to the principle of "beauty and truth". Many people here may ask what is the principle of "beauty and truth". The following is also a description from Feng Zikai's Enlightenment Painting:

Pictures are both ornamental and practical. Appreciation is beautiful, and practicality is true, so drawing exercises must take both "truth" and "beauty" into consideration. Specifically: for example, when drawing a bottle of flowers, we should carefully observe the shape, size, direction and color of flowers, leaves and bottles to avoid drawing mistakes. This is the "real" kung fu. At the same time, we should also coordinate and arrange skillfully to make it appropriate. At this time, the "beauty" aspect of kung fu.

Knowing this principle, we will try to balance the two elements of the picture in practice.

There are three points to pay attention to when making shadows:

Find the light source

Configuration of shadow color

You don't have to be completely realistic.

These three points can be demonstrated in detail in the following video:

Three-step technique of adding shadows to line illustrations

The effect after completion is as follows:

Speckle highlight

In the last step of creation, we added a small detail here, which is also the crowning touch that suddenly occurred to us, adding a bright spot to the picture.

Step 1

In plane composition, a point can be a point or a small square. In this picture, we use small white squares to highlight the picture.

A picture with a little highlight will make the picture more vivid.

The final effect:

Postscript: the idea behind it

While writing this article, I have arranged three videos, which may give beginners more inspiration. I have been struggling to make a video or write an article before. I thought articles and videos were the best way to get what I needed. But later, during the operation, it was found that the two roads could not be parallel. I can only insert more parts in the article that I think are worth developing.

Video is a supplement to the article, and the article is a supplement to video. Although now everyone says that there is no time to read words and videos are more direct, I always feel that it is easier to query and record what I have devoted myself to with words. Neither video nor article can replace each other.

What are the design methods of illustration? Give a few more examples. . . First of all, the illustrations are different according to different business needs; Such as book publishing, game modeling, cartoon mascot design and so on. Therefore, there should be different targeted design methods and concepts. Contemporary illustration industry mostly serves business. Therefore, the details of the design should be decided according to the requirements of the merchants. To satisfy the merchants and be willing to pay the bill, this requires that the designed finished products have universal popularity.

Different illustrations have different design goals, such as book publishing, and the cover and inner page illustrations should be grafted with the background and humanistic demands of the book. Game modeling should reflect the environment of the game; Age, nature, world outlook. Cartoon mascot

Understand the core values of enterprises and institutions, as well as market concepts and so on.

All of the above are theoretical. Technically, it can be understood as scenes, people, concepts and so on.

Scene design, you can collect some photographic materials and observe the changing trend of light sources in a day. Combine the color perception in the picture to strengthen the environmental content.

People should know more about anatomy and perspective, practice sketching more, and pay attention to collecting decorative materials of different textures, ornaments and nationalities, which is conducive to stimulating creation in the design process.

Conceptual design is an alternative understanding of industry and nature on the premise of overhead in history or times. For example, the early works of Hollywood film industry; It is to use hand-drawn effects to reproduce a situation that is more or less out of touch with reality. This requires the author to be bold, innovative and rigorous in the expression of color environment.

Although there are many rules and requirements in design art, it is not limited to creative thinking. A good hand-drawn foundation is essential. Don't let technology lag behind thinking, and certainly don't let thinking lag behind technology.

How to design creative illustrations? I. Contents

For commercial illustration, the creativity of content is actually the least easy for people to feel creative, but if the creativity of content can be done well, it is a very good growth opportunity for designers, so what should be paid attention to when doing content creativity? When designing, you can start with ordinary content and combine your unique experience and simplicity to draw a refreshing picture.

Second, composition

There are many aspects of composition design skills, which cannot be described one by one. In composition design, we can choose narrative composition and non-narrative composition. Refers to a composition with a certain sense of story. Non-narrative composition, contrary to narrative composition, has no obvious story plot and the picture generally has no realistic background. It is more a type of composition that expresses a point of view by comparing metaphors.

Third, modeling.

Modeling creativity can be said to be an important aspect of designer's expressive force and creativity. Every designer has a different style, and the creative style is also the most recognizable.

Fourth, color.

Different themes have restrictions on the use of colors, that is, not every type of color scheme is suitable for the same theme. Designers usually create similar themes, so they usually use the same color matching. Once you receive the entrustment of different theme types, you need to change the color by combining factors such as brand.