This is the second part of a two-part assignment involving rhyming word pairs. For this part of the assignment, we were to choose a second set of rhyming words and create a colored illustration to represent that pair. I chose "kitten/mitten" for the first part of the assignment (a black and white icon representation) so I chose another cat-related rhyming pair for my illustration: "cat/chat."
I decided to anthropomorphize my cats so that I could rely on expressionism and body language to convey "chatting," as opposed to relying on something more obvious like speech bubbles. The concept that I was working with was a sort of friendly conversation between two fur-ends over brunch. For the background, I chose a yellowish neutral tone that would bring the characters to the foreground. Lastly, I added details such as the halos around their heads to create focal points and the barred rectangular panels to create a sort of horizon line.
A big theme in most of my work is my effort to achieve unity and color balance in my image-making and compositions. I also wanted both characters to have their own apparent personalities and so when I was picking my color pallet (with the help of Adobe Colors), I created two color schemes: one warm, sunny, and vibrant, and the other cooler, deeper, and complementary. I wanted to make sure that the two schemes worked well together and created contrast and visual intrigue.
For the background, I chose a yellowish neutral tone that would bring the characters to the foreground. Lastly, I added details such as the halos around their heads to create focal points and the barred rectangular panels to create a sort of horizon line.
The creative process...
My process involved brainstorming a number of thumbnail sketches. After I zeroed in on a few ideas, I proceeded to flesh out the details until I had something that I thought I could work with in Illustrator. Then I brought the sketch in and created vectors.
