This piece is something I’ve been working on bit by bit while not focusing on bigger projects. It was just a warm up, or something to mess with when I was waiting for something or listening to videos. It was fun taking a simple sketch from last summer and pushing it to something I’m proud of.

When I decided to expand upon the original sketch, I wanted to imitate my previous work, Ashland University Art & Design Poster. The combination of charcoal and digital painting was unique to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed the final result. Rather than using actual charcoal I opted to use default charcoal and pencil brushes on Procreate. This created a near equivalent result, as seen here. For the final piece I recolored some of the line work to soften the image.

One thing that I wasn't particularly happy about with Ashland was the lack of texture in the coloring. I had attempted to add some variation in the sky, but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. For this work, instead of sticking to basic round brushes for colors, I used the same charcoal and pencil brushes that were used for the line art layer. This is easier to see when viewing close-ups of the picture. I believe it adds more depth and interest, which was needed for this simple composition.