I've been recently working on a book that requires some crowd scenes, and groups of people. Sometimes I do find I can be tempted to let the figures in a crowd or group become a bit non-specific, characterless, loose, drones, who all look the same, due to the repetition of filling the space.
Rather than making them all being individual characters.
And the difference is the enjoyment in doing the illustration.
Whatever the picture, if I can find something in it that fires my interest/inspiration, and gets me engrossed, then I enjoy doing it more, and therefore it comes out better.
So, my first task when doing an illustration, along with working out the composition, is finding the route to being inspired.
So with these recent crowd scenes I'm working on, I blocked out the composition reasonably quickly, and then had a nice relax with my sketchbook and enjoyed myself trying to think up different characters to populate the crowds.
And here they are.
