Creative Insight - Rosie Wheeldon

This weekend I discovered a wonderful illustrator named Rosie on Facebook after she liked my page and was so impressed with the work that she creates herself I just had to ask her if she would be interested in doing a Creative Insight and luckily she said yes! So here it is! Thanks Rosie!

Hello!

I’m Rosie and I am a freelance Illustrator living in the North of England. I started freelancing in the second year of my illustration degree, when I was commissioned to design the character mascot for an exhibition at my local museum. My dream is to become a children’s (and grown-up’s!) book illustrator, nothing is more magical than a book, and I have been in love with narrative illustration from a very early age.

I was very happy when I was asked to provide a creative insight, so lets start at the beginning with my desk..

I like working with lots of pictures around me, and my books close at hand when I need inspiration.

Here are some of my favourite books from creative influences. As well as children’s books, I enjoy the art of films and video games too.

Now to show you how I produce my digital paintings for the ‘Cassius and Gustav’ web comic..

I produce a sketch on paper and scan it in; I usually draw the main features in my compositions separately, and then piece them together on my Mac.

I use Corel Painter X to create my digital paintings, and I use a charcoal pencil and a blender. I build the background first with lots of colours (all on the same layer) then I blend them and add to it until I am happy I have caught the ‘atmosphere’ of my picture. I added the floating creatures on the background layer in this piece too, because I wanted them to enhance the background colour. I like my characters to be in magical settings, and this is what ‘Cassius and Gustav’ is all about.

Here I start to add the essentials, like skin tone, hair colour and the clothes. This is the stage I find most daunting because you can paint the most wonderful, colourful setting for a character, but if the small details are wrong then the whole picture suffers. So I take a lot of time and care over this part.

When the base colours are done, I have a wonderful time adding shade and highlight to the characters, to really bring them into the world I have created for them. I loved doing the highlight in this painting, as it was a beautiful eerie blue colour- magical! 

   

I make use of the ‘zoom’ feature (one of the best perks of working digitally), to illustrate fine details like the pattern on the floating creatures.

I finish by adding the final touches of light and a little bit of sparkle :)

Before I add the text and publish the final illustration, I save a riff file, which I keep to make adjustments before I turn the pictures into prints. I also save a jpeg that I upload to my blog and my Flickr page.

So there it is, a quick insight into my digital paintings. You can follow the Cassius and Gustav webcomic here: cassiusandgustav.com

Keep up to date with my portfolio building and be the first to see my portfolio website as soon as it is finished, by following my little blog here: tothedepthsillustration.blogspot.co.uk

I put all my work up on my Flickr photostream: flickr.com/photos/heartbiscuits/

And you can follow me on Twitter: @scrimmle

If you would like to commission me, collaborate with me or ask me any more questions, get in touch via email: rose@tothedepths.com

Thank you for reading my feature, I do hope you stay in touch!

See you soon
Rose x