Newt Fishing 001

I've been working on some portfolio pieces that are done in illustrator, and I thought about when I was younger and my sister and I used to catch newts in my Nans ponds. I thought it was awesome, and I liked the spotty ones and my sister liked the striped ones. We would race them, which thinking now I don't know how it worked, they were probably just running the heck away from our grabby hands. We'd keep them in water and put them back in the pond after. I thought about using this as a basis for some backgrounds.

I'd taught myself illustrator through online tutorials and trial and error, but then last week I did two courses on Skillshare by Widhi Muttaqien and there was so many gaps in my knowledge I didn't even know I was missing, so it was a very very valuable thing for me to do. I'm dipping in and out of courses at the moment, because I'm trying to balance making good work for my portfolio and learning the skills to make better work! Sometimes I feel like I don't want to finish anything because in a month I'll know how to do it better haha!

Anyway this was the first background I did in illustrator, I loved learning about how to make art brushes and implementing them, getting better at using masks, also being able to select all shapes or paths with certain properties- very cool! I picked up so many tricks, and felt so excited to be learning so much again. 

Background 1

For my second background in this series, I want to do it from the perspective of inside the pond, and as I've been developing it I've jotted down some questions/observations from research I've written down through my development:

- How's are the plants going to warp out of the water?

-Which direction are we facing so what will we see on the surface and underneath?

-What does pond undergrowth look like?

- I looked at reference from YouTube, which showed lots of leaves, there's a tree above our pond so leaf sediment is likely.

- Stone ramp for amphibians to crawl out (which I've drawn in the original)

- I could put in leaves, twigs, furry plants on stones and twigs , some things people have dropped

- Good research: Go pro videos of garden ponds

- Must remember: Shaddows on pond floor

- I started thinking what will the edges of the pond look like, but after research I realise the water won't be clear enough for you to see the edges or the back of the pond, so I don't need to worry about that

- Camera choice: fish eye lens

- How far can I see?

- Avoid symetry

- Lines on the surface are ripply not straight

- Remember foreground - mid ground - background

- Shadow on stems under water lillies

- Sometimes I can think a bit too logically, I can design this however I like, to be as pleasing as it can be, it doesn't have to be nature-correct eg. lines of stems on water Lillies.

I'd placed the camera looking to the back of the pond, so the waterlilies would be overhead and the pebble ramp behind. I'm experimenting here with lighting, one trying to understand what the lighting should look like, and 2 trying to use it to create an attractive image. With the Lillie stems going straight up and being a dark tone it felt gloomy, when I took them away completely I thought 'Oh this looks really nice' so I'm experimenting with how to put them in, but have them more delicate. Sometimes I get carried away with how things should look and the logistics, and I need to remember this isn't realism! Bend the rules! I think when I'm doing my own work, I need to start with an art style and some boundaries and then I know which realm I'm in. I was intending to do this in illustrator for the final piece, like the above ground illustration, because I want to have a selection of backgrounds and assets in illustrator in my portfolio, but I think this could be a really beautiful piece I'd like to spend more time on digital painting. I think the solution will be - do a version to fit with the original background, and then work it for a different style another time. I feel like there's a lot I can learn with this idea and setting and understanding approaches to underwater.