Bear Hike Illustrations: Exploring Angles
Today’s class was all about composition studies, and I ended up picking the toughest angle—looking up! Time to let the bears go big.
Still moving full steam ahead with my My Imaginary Art School assignments! Today, I picked the hiking bears illustration from yesterday and challenged myself to draw it in three different compositions.
I set a 15-minute timer for each one and tried out a close-up, a wide shot, and an angle from below.
I’ve never drawn a from-below perspective before, so it was seriously tough. But of course, when I asked ChatGPT-sensei for help, it walked me through a bunch of ways to approach it.
Out of the three, the one I ended up wanting to turn into a final illustration was the from-below angle. Maybe because it was the hardest—that made me want to take it on even more. I was going to draw it as a line drawing sketch again, but this time I really wanted to keep it minimal while still showing the bears being completely surrounded by Asheville’s nature—like they’re tiny in this big, wild landscape, but totally loving it. So I sketched and re-sketched a bunch of times trying to get that feeling just right. It was all about how much I could strip away while still keeping that “Ashevilleness.” And when you think of Asheville, you think of the Blue Ridge Mountains—so I made sure to include those, but also left the top part of the page mostly blank to really let the sky feel huge. I even took out the clouds on purpose just to give that wide open feeling.
The final version I ended up with is the one you see as the cover illustration for this blog post! I’m still wondering, “Is this really finished?” but I do really like how that one little falling leaf adds a soft autumn vibe to the whole thing.
It’s the weekend tomorrow, but I’m planning to keep going—adding color and getting it ready to call finished!