Editorial Illustration Tutorial

It is time for our very first tutorial. This week we've been providing spotlights of our own projects along with some of the work of our favorite illustrators. And as promised this week ends with a tutorial on how to create your very own illustration. 1) Pick a topic The process of creating an editorial illustration is unexpectedly very research oriented. For the purpose of this tutorial you'd be asked to pick a topic first. Normally you'd be approached by a client with a topic of their choosing. First off open up any online newspaper and go through the topics

When picking a topic, you need to consider your own interests. Usually the work you'd take on and create either personally or professionally is going to affect which clients contact you for work. If you focus on political issues you'd be more than likely to be contacted to create editorial illustrations for political topics.

For this tutorial, we picked the BBC topic called "'Tipping point' risk for Arctic hotspot" partly because of our interest in environmental and scientific topics along with that I've never illustrated glaciers before, so It would be an interesting exercise. 2) Element study Studying what you illustrate beforehand is a vital step in the process. Designing from memory isn't as reliable as you'd think. You'd need to gather a collection of photos to study the identified elements with. Since this is a topic about the arctic understanding how glaciers look like is what we will be doing.

3) Sketching and color study After fully absorbing the element you need to start sketching out (Very roughly refer to horribly done sketch a few scrolls away) and creating a color palette. During the sketching process you need to create several iterations.

4) Basic coloring and outlining time to actually start! Create outlines and basic colors for your illustration

5) Texturing and detailing Adding detail by detail, the illustration will be brought to life bit by bit

And baam, now you have an editorial illustration. The process as simple as it is requires time investment and extensive research. The more time you invest in the pre-design process the more mature and professional the work would turn out to be! We'd love to see your very own illustration so try out the process and send us your work at our email and we will post it on our channels!

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