Diamond: A Junior Narrative Illustration by Isabella Velasco (2018)

My flash fiction is about a little boy with a great love for baseball. His brother is his biggest supporter and often acts as a father figure to him. The boy’s character is shy but caring by nature and is very intelligent for his age.

For this project, I first started by sketching the different animal parts separately so that it would easier for me to see where each would look best when put together. After I had a sketch of a creature that I was satisfied with, I then began to look up pictures of the animals in the position that I wanted them to be in my illustration. I then placed the images in Adobe Illustrator and began to trace each detail and fill with color. The background of my illustration was definitely the most difficult part of this project. There were so many little details pertaining to the linear perspective of my illustration that had to be perfect to even tell what the background was. It was very challenging to make my background look as clean as possible because of how much is going on. I chose to make the background of my illustration a baseball field/diamond so that I could display my character doing what he loves most. The different animals that I chose to make my creature out of complimented the qualities of the character in my flash fiction. The head of my creature is a owl to represent my character’s intelligence, and the body is a seal that are also very caring by nature. If I were to do this project over again, I think that I would choose different animals to reflect the characteristics of my character to make my illustration more interesting.