This project was one of my favourite commissions for a client so far, because I hardly had any restrictions. Savage Interactive, the creators of Procreate, asked me to create a commission artwork for their new Procreate 4 update featuring the text-tool. My only requirements were that I had to use text and create the illustration in Procreate 4 Beta.
As a first step, I had to come up with three sketches.
I wanted this piece to be a “Wimmelbild”. That’s German and means an image with lots of hidden objects, that you can look at for a long time and always discover something new.
With this in mind I started to think of places where there is a lot to discover. I really love all kinds of animals, that’s why one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind were the jungle and the ocean. As a third idea I came up with Wanderlust, because when you are traveling you can also discover a lot of things.
Based on these three ideas I created sketches. I was really happy that Savage Interactive picked the “Welcome to the Jungle” sketch, because it was my favourite as well.
The next step was to create different colour schemes. For me this is a really important but also quite difficult step, because it makes such a huge impact on the overall feeling of the final illustration. I created about ten different versions and sent my four favourites to Savage Interactive. Luckily they chose my favourite one again. After that I started to work on the final illustration.
I really enjoyed the process of this piece and was happy with the outcome.
It can be difficult to come up with ideas for personal projects, because you have no boundaries. When working on commissions your client has at least some sort of expectations and therefore I feel like it’s easier to settle on an idea. In this case the little restrictions helped me to find inspiration.
