I drew the steam train to help illustrate some course materials. On the page, the train stood alone on a plain white background. I really enjoyed drawing it and it would be fun to add a background and make it more of a complete picture.
After the course had finished I had a bit more time and so I returned to the train to see what I could do with it.
I mulled through a few ideas, and then it struck me that it might be possible to combine the train with another drawing to create a new image.
Introducing the dog and the sportscar
One of my very favourite cartoons is this one of the sports car, with the dog enjoying the wind rushing by.
I started to imagine putting this image on top of the train one.
Layout out the new image
I’ve now laid out the image and added an outline for the background and also the hedgerow separating the road from the track. Adding the hedgerow also meant that I didn’t have to draw the train track!
You can also see that I’ve started to add a pallete that I’m going to use to colour the background.
Colouring the background
Most of the colouring has now been finished, the palette has been extended as I coloured different sections.
Time for a respray
While I liked the original green of the sports car, I thought that it was both a bit on the drab side and also that it would blend in with the hedgerow too much. I thought it would be a good idea to change it to red, and that the bright red would contrast nicely with the bright blue of the train.
Almost finished
Almost finished now. I set the eraser to 50% opacity and when over some of the background lines, as I didn’t want the boldness to distract from the bold lines in the main elements.
The finished picture
I resized the image slightly and that’s it!
I thought perhaps that I should have added some bolder lines to the car, but left it as it is for the time being.
Over to you
It is now time for you to try this idea out for yourself.
Have a look over your previous drawings. Are there two you feel could work well together to produce a new image?
The new image might be even stronger than the two images separately.
In this case, I used two drawings containing mainelements (the train and the car), but you could also look to combine a main element with another background.
You could even try combining one your drawings with someone else’s image or photo.