Domestika Review - Composition and Color for Creative Illustration by Marcos Chin

 

This illustration of a Chinese Lion Dance was drawn using both Illustrator and hand painted from Chinese food ingredients (a wash of diluted soy sauce, concentrated Chinese tea and dabs of dipping sauce). Blending both digital and hand painted elements brings up some weird and interesting effects to the final piece. It was created as a result of following a course on Domestika by Marcos Chin.

Marcos Chin is an editorial illustrator. You can see his work over on Instagram here. The Domestika course he teaches offered some new insights for me as I was keen to learn how he interpreted his article based assignments plus how he managed to paint such vibrant pieces of art. By following his course, I created my Lion Dance piece described below:-

My final project is based on the history of London's Chinatown (see article here). Chinatown has a special place in my memories. It has always been a location where I would celebrate important events in my life (birthdays, graduations, wedding etc). 

Marcos begins each new assignment by picking out key words from an article and then doing a word-association list. The key words I took from the Chinatown article (and from my own experiences) include Hope and Celebration. Hope refers to the many generations of Chinese families who migrated from China to London in the hope to create a better life for themselves. For many, Chinatown would be the place where they set their roots down or at least find a community who could help them find work and make friends.

Marcos then showed how he begins to draw thumbnail sketches based on the key words and eventually will decide on one that he will take to final project.

Marcos discusses composition theory and I found his use of triangulations very useful knowledge to use for my own works.

After drawing a decent pencil drawing, Marcos then scans it into his computer and re-draws it using Adobe Illustrator. Unusually he chooses to use shapes that include both the fill colour and the stroke. This is different to how I do things as I draw with only fill or only stroke but never bother together.

The advantage of this method is that Marcos is able to vary the colours for each and every shape he makes. Since his signature style uses a lot of abstract blobs this method suits him perfectly. I too following this style of vector drawing with my Lion Dance. 

After the vector drawing is complete, Marcos prints out his work onto ordinary printer paper and then paints over it using a wide variety of brush and pen marks. The paints he uses are very dilute and the effect can be quite subtle. He also creates his own textures onto plain paper. Both the re-painted vector drawing and his pages of textures are then applied to the original vector art in Photoshop.

I copied this technique for the Lion Dance piece using  Chinese tea as paint and soy sauce to make texture's marks (see photos above and below).

Painting something so watery onto the inkjet print out made the ink bleed a little and the paper buckled. But this was kind of cool and it gave the piece a raw analog feel. I scanned this painting back into my computer and added it as a layer in Photoshop.

After a bit of adjusting and editing, the final piece looks as below.

This is a great course and opened my eyes to different techniques that could enhance my artworks. I especially liked Marcos's tips on key wording, composition and his blending of analog with digital drawing to create the final piece.