Alright, so today I wanted to share a little something I worked on. It wasn’t a big deal, just a bit of a creative itch I needed to scratch, you know? The idea was simple: a black and white broken heart. I just felt like making something with that kind of vibe.
Getting Started
First things first, I just grabbed my tablet and stylus. Didn’t really plan much, just sort of went with the flow. I opened up my usual drawing program – nothing fancy, just the one I’m comfortable with. I started by sketching out a heart shape. Sounds easy, right? But you’d be surprised how many tries it can take to get a heart that doesn’t look lopsided or just plain weird. After a few attempts, deleting and redrawing, I got one that felt about right. Not too perfect, but good enough for what I had in mind.
Making it Broken
Next up was the ‘broken’ part. I didn’t want a clean, straight line. That felt too… clinical. I wanted it to look like it actually shattered, you know? So, I drew a jagged, zig-zag line right through the middle of the heart. I fiddled with this for a bit, making some peaks sharper, some valleys deeper, until it had that proper fractured look. It’s funny how you can spend ten minutes on just a line, trying to get it to look ‘naturally’ broken.
The Black and White Treatment
Now for the black and white. This is where the main aesthetic comes in. I decided I wanted a really stark contrast. My first thought was to fill one half of the broken heart solid black, and leave the other half white. So, I picked one side of the crack and carefully filled it in with black. It’s always a bit satisfying watching that digital paint bucket do its thing. The other side, I left as the clean white of the canvas.
But just having one side black and one side white wasn’t quite enough. The crack itself needed some definition. I went back over the jagged line of the break with a thicker, darker black outline. This really made the two halves pop and emphasized that sense of separation. It gave it a bit more oomph, if you know what I mean.
Little Details and Finishing Up
I thought about adding more details, like textures or shading, but then I figured, nah, let’s keep it simple. The stark black and white was the whole point. Sometimes less is more, right? I did spend a little time cleaning up the edges, making sure the black fill was neat and there were no stray pixels. Zooming in and out a bunch, like you do.
And that was pretty much it. Just a simple exercise, but I was pretty happy with how it turned out. It’s got that clear, graphic feel. It didn’t take ages, just a focused bit of time making something. It’s good to just sit down and create something, even if it’s just a small thing like this. Definitely a good way to just zone out and make something tangible, or well, digitally tangible in this case.
