USE COLOURS THAT BOOST YOUR ART

Create illustrations with high saturation and strong contrast to catch the eye, with concept artist and illustrator Sora Kim

- Sora Kim

I have often designed suits of fantasy armour using animals as motifs.

For this personal project, however, I wanted to use an animal that rarely appears in my work. The koi, a type of carp, is an ornamental fish raised in Korea, Japan and China. This series actually started with a plate armour design. Although the armour had a Western form, I used Asian-style strings to connect the armour plates and swords.

This time, I took the concept further by including traditional Korean elements, drawing a female character wearing a hanbok (traditional Korean dress). I wanted the overall silhouette, to evoke the shape of a fish, not just the decorative details. As part of a series from the previous artwork, I maintained a strong contrast in light and shadow and used rich primary colours, adding various textures to prevent the image from looking flat.

In this workshop, I'll show you my process and explain how to create and apply your own texture patterns from a photo.

1 Taking elements from the koi armour

I decide to incorporate graphic elements from the previous work: strong contrast, high saturation, rich colours and primary colour usage. I also decide to use the flat fish line drawing from the piece. Although I change the armour to a dress, I keep the three swords and the Asian-style armour ties.

2 Colour palette

I prepare a high-saturation colour palette, knowing that I'll need to control the amounts used to create visual emphasis and an eye-catching image. For this illustration, I'll mainly use orange and red, with ultramarine - the complementary colour - for the background.