Recently I did an illustration for Jonathan Wold for an article he wrote on his site. In this post I wanted to share a bit of the process, and hopefully inspire others with how messy it can be to get from the beginning to the end.

We’ve worked together quite a bit in the past (we’re brothers after all), and we both know how to trust each other to get from an initial idea to the end result. Often Jonathan comes up with the idea for an illustration he wants, and then we have an initial chat about it. From there I try a few things out, and then I’ll text them over for feedback.

At that point he gives thoughts on what he likes and doesn’t, and I’ll keep tweaking. The key factor though, is at any point I’m welcome to disagree with his assessment and push in a different direction. In fact I do that often, maybe half of the time. He trusts that the end results will work out, and prefers instead to give general guidance, but not to push too hard in any direction. Because of that I try not to get too attached to any one idea until I take it from sketches to full on illustration.

First, here’s the final image:

And here’s the most of the steps to accomplish that:

And here are some of the reference images I was using throughout the process. To show that all design is inspired by others.

And finally, thanks to Procreate I can share a video of the final step. Hope you enjoy!