The Year of Rabbit 2023 Illustration in Procreate

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May 29

The year 2023 is special to me because the year I was born was also the Year of Rabbit. So I decided to create a Chinese New Year illustration featuring a rabbit. Below is my creative process for this illustration in Procreate:

I started with an outline of a rabbit and filled in the whole shape with a color, and also carved out its eye.

To continue with the illustration, I wanted to do two things. I wanted to include a few Chinese cultural elements, and I wanted to represent the art of paper cutting in the Chinese culture.

And that's exactly what I did in this illustration. I drew two types of flowers on the body of the rabbit: plum blossoms and peach blossoms. They are two of the well grown plants during the spring season in China. Together with lots of leaves, they form the decorative patterns on the entire rabbit.

And in order to present the illustration in a Chinese paper cutting style, I simply used the Eraser in Procreate as a brush to draw. The parts I erased equal the ones I would take out using a knife when doing paper cutting. After that, I created a new layer underneath and colored in some of the erased parts.

The very last step is to draw a border around the rabbit. I referred to some of the Chinese border designs and created one myself. And inside the border, I decided to fill in a very saturated red color (a symbol of the Chinese culture) to make the rabbit stand out. In the end, I simply add my signature and text on top of the illustration, and all is done.