Behind the Scenes: Art Studio Illustration (Patreon)

This week, I was looking for some refreshing and uplifting idea. Ideally without any connection to an existing pop-culture reference. Of course, I like to re-create my favorite popular TV moments, and they reach audience a bit better too. But sometimes, I just want a blank canvas.

As I was browsing through some of my older works, I came across this series of small shops I did back in the day. Bakery, coffee shop, gift shop and others. And I noticed how simple they were. Mostly made out of low poly objects with some smoothing to make them rounded and stylized and with basic materials without any textures.

And I remembered how creative it felt to do something like this. Without counting on the textures to deliver the right look and feel. Getting into trenches and pushing vertices to create the final look of the object.

Visit the full Pinboard here

And as I was thinking about being creative, taking a step back to something simple and of all things about blank canvas, I decided to create a cozy and mindful art studio. Of course, I don't just want to go back and recreate some old style. I always look for opportunities to improve.

So I realized I can keep the old simple approach to modeling and building the 3d space, but textures can actually help me to sprinkle some life into certain surfaces. Especially those, that need to feel natural. Like wood.

It can almost resemble toys, that are simplified and stylized, but made out of real materials. The bare wood has always a nice texture, but the painted and plastic smooth surfaces give it a nice contrast.

I went ahead and searched for some image reference of the art studio. Mostly looking for different kinds of furnishings and types of buildings. Also, it was important to mentally build a catalogue of things and items to include, like different art supplies, notebooks and craft related assets.

I sketched out the room layout, including a large patio door, that I saw on one of the references. One thing I had to be careful about, especially going from recent more realistic approaches to illustration, were proportions. While sketching, I had to erase several times and remind myself to make things enlarged, bulky and rounded. It was a deliberate practice to free myself from the real world and making sure the final result is out of proportions and very playful.

The rest was mostly about placing the right objects around the scene and getting into Blender for few hours of blissful modeling flow.

And as I mentioned before, I used some Substance textures on wooden objects, but nowhere else. All of the other surfaces are solid color PBR materials with various amount of gloss.

Finally, Midjourney AI helped me to generate the abstract painting images, that I could place on the canvas.

You can watch the process video on Youtube