Solitude - An awakening inner peace

While aimlessly surfing through Pinterest I saw this image of a little free library. I just loved cosy home shaped library. 

I thought how about, if someone can actually sit inside that home and get lost in books. In the 'More like this ' section of Pinterest, some more similar images popped up. It helped me further my imagination. I loved this small balcony with flowers. 

And this little heart shape in this image below, made me think, how about adding a little heart somewhere. 

With these ideas in mind I started off to do a very rough sketch. 

Rough sketch

Based on this sketch I created an ideaboard  with some more images to help polish my idea.

Ideaboard

This is the polished sketch.

Final Sketch

Meanwhile I was watching Color Masterclass: Simple Steps to Create Vivid Art class by Victo Ngai over Skillshare. I thought of trying the ideas she shared there for colouring this illustration.

I wanted to evoke cosy, warm and peaceful feeling with this piece. So I searched for images that evokes similar feeling for me. I found this colour palette used in this illustration by Paola Escobar having similar feeling. So I thought of stealing this palette 😉. 

Illustration by Paola Escobar used by colour inspiration

I blocked in the colours. 

After blocking in I felt the colours to be all over the place. So tried pushing colours to cohesiveness. 

The colours started to feel cohesive. However, the black colour of her hair was merging with the background. I wanted to keep the hair black, as that's the hair colour Indians have. But since it merged, I tried deviating from keeping the hair black.

Colouring her hair to a reddish tone helped to pop out the girl. I also added pattern in her dress to make her pop out more.

So here's my final illustration piece coloured.

However, if I try to do a value study, it is clear, the red of her hair and the pattern is doing the heavy lifting of bringing the attention to the girl reading book. Also the hand and book is merging. So value wise I need to practice more.