Visual Storytelling techniques

Lee White

Hey guys, I just wanted to tell you that if you haven't watched my visual storytelling class that you should! The reason I'm mentioning this is I am doing the initial sketches for a new book and I'm having to use every trick and technique I mentioned in the video to pull it off. The text is giving me NOTHING! So I'm having to illustrate a second story within the book that I made up just to have content for it. It's written very light without much story to mention at all. If I didn't have those techniques, I'm not sure what I would do here!

Jason Bowen

@Lee-White Sounds good, if it's about fish you can add fish shapes everywhere again haha I loved that bit. I never understood collage until seeing that.

Lee White

Great idea Jason! I'm adding anything I can just to make it interesting!

Once this one is done, I'll make a video about it because it may be the hardest thing I've illustrated in terms of storytelling and content.

Cyd

I bought a copy of Sophie's Fish after watching, so clever AAAAAGGGHH

Jason Bowen

@Lee-White sounds great, looking forward to it.

NickA

It's on my to watch list, hopefully I get to it soon. Thanks for the reminder.

Charlie Eve Ryan

@Lee-White I watched it twice and I still refer back to it! One of the best classes on here so far!

Charlie Eve Ryan

@Lee-White I'm also trying to remember to PIN these classes to my I HEART ART TUTORIALS page on Pinterest. Any little thing to help others see this amazing school and get the word out.

VeronicaMui

@Lee-White ( I understand if you’re too busy to reply to this, I just noticed when I went to start a new topic that there was already this topic on this class so I figured I’d post here)

I LOVED listening to this class and of course thought “oh man, I’m prepared now!” But it was still a struggle when I sat down to do the class work ...I really am not good at concept! BUT I do feel like I have a new perspective and new methods to try and I just need more pencil time.

This is my first try at creating an illustration for the “They knew this storm was coming. The little boat was tossed like a rag doll” sentence prompt.

I will post the other thumbnails later if I can find them, but sadly, they’re not much different. I need to work on doing more thumbnails because I find that once I have an initial idea I tend to stick pretty close to that, it’s hard for me to shake it and think up another one.

I really didn’t like the first finished image (the smaller one on the left) because all the colors were muddy and just ran together...The second finished one I don’t love either - I like the girls face/shoulders, and the colors in the sky...I don’t like her pose (Shouldn’t have followed the reference photo so closely...), why did I put a duck in the boat?? And why is it also yellow?? Omg. What a mess..Everything is running together again and the boat isn’t reading at all (why did I make that blue too??). I find it difficult to separate things using color, I need to take a class on that if there is one as well.

At least this made me create an entire image (even if I don’t like it) because I don’t get that kind of practice enough. I will probably do this over again several times and try doing more thumbnails...