Treehouse Tea
My first piece done with guidance from Emily, the founder of The Illustration Initiative, has some of my favorite things to draw - animals, tree trunks, and vines. I particularly enjoyed the coloring process because it was challenging to figure out how to limit the use of browns in a treehouse piece and instead use deeper blues and softer greens and purples.
The Process
Starting off with some rough sketches, the idea behind this piece was initially a fancy tea party at a treehouse. Looking back, I can see that the characters each doing their own thing or interacting in pairs was not strong story telling because they don't really relate to one another. There should also be a better way to incorporate the tree with the actual tree house rather than the stairs off to the bottom right.
Keeping the weaknesses of the former sketches in mind, I redrew a new treehouse scene, as shown below.
It was tricky to figure out colors because the floors are wooden, and there are tree trunks in the middle ground and background. It would make sense to keep these wood elements as brown, but the piece would not be very colorful. Emily suggested that we go with the top right coloring but to remove those overly bright reds. However, I still had to figure out a solution to add color. Should the rug fill the majority of the floor? Or maybe the wooden panels could be replaced with patterned tiles?
In the end, I covered the floor with a field of flowers because it fit how the cat and rabbit moms are having a casual picnic.
Adding sunlight rays, shading, and little details put the finish on this piece.
