Draw a storyline for your portfolio!
October arrived with a lot of rain and wind here on the west coast of Norway, and it was a sudden transition from summer to autumn.
Anyway, enough about the weather. Halloween wasn’t something we celebrated when I was growing up, but in recent years, it has become more and more common here in Norway too. It took me a couple of years to get used to it, but now it’s something both my kids and I look forward to as we settle into autumn.
Since I’m already in the Halloween mood, I thought it would be a fun subject for a storyline illustration in my portfolio.
To tell a short storyline, I thought at least three illustrations would be necessary. I started with the middle one, picturing three kids going trick-or-treating. I brainstormed different costume ideas and ended up choosing ones my own kids have worn. I also imagined the kids out trick-or-treating, but suddenly found it to bit too scary! Maybe they had to go through a dark forest to get to some houses? We live quite rurally, so that’s certainly the case for my kids:)
Here’s the first sketch I came up with:
Then, I asked myself the simple question: What happened before and what happened after?
I imagine they met at one of their homes, optimistic and full of anticipation for what they were about to do. Here is the second sketch (first in the storyline):
Then they got scared (they ended up in a forest with a couple of ghosts—who wouldn’t be?). Finally, I pictured them together at home, under a blanket, watching a movie and eating candy. Here’s my final sketch:
Since this isn’t a story I plan to publish, the plot itself isn’t as important to me. To be honest, I think my kids could make a better story than this, but I am not a writer, I am an illustrator. What I want to show is that I can draw consistent characters that express emotions. In hindsight, I could have varied the perspective and the poses more, but I’ll cover that in other illustrations :)
I’ve finished the first of the three illustrations with colors, but I plan to put all the sketches in my portfolio (maybe after refining them a little bit), since I don’t have any sketches in there yet.
Here is the finished illustration with colors:
I hope you enjoyed the walkthrough, and good luck with your own work.
Happy drawing!
Ane :)