An Idea

The feeling I wanted to convey was that of anxiety and impending doom and the idea went through a series of changes before it reached the final. It was initially of a snake about to attack three bunnies at a bus stop. But after some revisions, it ended up being a snake ready to pounce on a sleeping mother gecko.

Power of the Simple Statement

When deciding how to layout the drawing, I first thought how can I portray the feeling of anxiety and doom with as few lines as possible and I came up with this.

Even with just three lines, you can tell that the tiny circle is about to be crushed by the huge circle above it. With this line skeleton to work with, I began to draw a gesture sketch.

Gesture & Rhythm

Since it was a nature setting, I wanted lots of long flowing organic lines. I used long gestures for the tree, the snake’s body, the mushrooms, foliage and for the gecko’s body. I needed all these lines to lead your eye to the focal point.

{show rhythm lines}

Layout

Based on the simple statement and the gesture sketch, I could draw the layout. My goal here was to decide on the forms and the perspective. I used lots of contour lines (lines that show form) and depth clues – such as overlapping objects.

{show contour lines}

Colour & Light Design

I wanted to keep a clear division in the image with cool colours at the top and warm colours at the bottom so the snake would feel cold and ominous and the gecko would feel warm and happy. I designed the colour with the direct light being yellow sunlight and ambient light being blue skylight. This is how nature works and would help give the scene believablity.

Final Render

Once the layout and colours are decided, all that is left is to render out all the details. This part is painstakingly long and frustrating but the feeling of satisfaction on completion is worth it. When rendering, its important to not get caught up in the details. If I zoom in too much and work then I will have lost sight of the whole picture.

I render more contrast in the focal points like the face of the snake and the mother gecko with her eggs. Everything else was secondary and should not overpower the focal points. So I kept the contrast down and the edges soft in other areas so as not to distract the audience away from the focal point.

This is the final image and I hope you like how it turned out!