Behind the Scenes: Coffee Shop Illustration (Patreon)

 I wanted to continue with the style, that I've set with the pizzeria illustration recently and coffee shop came as a natural sequel. I think the coffee and pizza are the things, that no creative can go without very long :) 

I didn't want to go the coffee supermarket style similar to what large brands offer. I had a really small and quite place in mind, with a bit of earthy styling, lots of wood and materials like linen and paper with some chalk lettering hanging around. To the research!

This time, collecting materials for the PureRef board was easier, thought time consuming. Try to search for "hipster cafe", or "cool coffee shop" on Google Images or Pinterest and you will get swamped. There are many coffee shop styled this way and they have one thing in common. Lot of visual cues going on at the same time! So it's a bit demanding to focus on the carousel of the images and pick the right ones.

After collecting some interiors I liked the most, I explored them in details and found the things I liked to include. The layout is very similar to the coffee place at the bottom right, with the counter, window, table and coffee placements, so that was the starting point.

For the sketch I used the layout I picked and tried to populate with all the cool things from different reference images. They don't have to look same, but the thing alone, that you are reminded to put hanging plant in, light bulbs in the window or flowers on the table is enough to get your creative brain going.

At this stage, it's kind of a Lego where you have all the pieces you need and you're playing around. Still, remember that with the same pieces, you can build bunny, but Gozilla as well :D

I got a feedback, that for some of you, it might be easier to skip the sketching part and just go into blender and layout simple primitives like cubes and spheres. That's totally OK and I would still consider this sketching, as long as it helps you get to the desired results.

I used some techniques to get the desired look and feel, so let's have a look at some tips :)

So, this was the Coffee Shop scene, I really I hope you enjoyed it and it can help you with your next work.