Welcome! thom.dyrpg is my artist handle. I’m so happy you’re checking out my Lo-Fi tutorial. My goal here is to set you on the path to make an awesome, chilled-out and comfy Lo-Fi illustration in 5 EASY STEPS! In this tutorial we’ll talk about artistic content and techniques that will evoke feelings of nostalgia, which is what Lo-fi is all about!

STEP 1: ANSWER THE QUESTION: WHAT IS LO-FI?

Before we discuss visual elements, I’d recommend searching up Lo-Fi playlists on your favorite music streaming platform. What’s so cool about Lo-Fi is that it’s a music genre AND an art aesthetic, both of which are intertwined. Lofi’s music is often evocative of feelings of nostalgia and chill. It can also be melancholy and sad, while at other times representative of mental states requiring deep focus. Lo-Fi music encompasses many musical subgenres, from Hip-Hop subgenres like Chill-Hop to the Electronica subgenre, Vaporwave. There are many musical expressions of nostalgia. We’re going to be focused on Lo-Fi that emerged around the early 2000s and expresses a nostalgia for the 1980s and 1990s.

 

Now let’s take a look at the illustrations that accompany the playlists. I can’t post other artists’ work here so I’ll trust you to do your due diligence when conducting a “Lo-Fi” image search.

Hopefully you noticed a feeling that emerged from the art in your Lo-Fi image search. That fuzzy feeling is called nostalgia. To illustrate this feeling I made this junky, yet charming(?) drawing to call attention to what Nostalgia is.

 

Nostalgia refers to media that promotes feelings of safety, innocence and comfort. Like the dood chilling with his dog in the picture above. We’ll explore this concept a little bit deeper, but I wanted to provide a taste of what’s to come.

 

To accomplish this feeling in our illustration we’ll use elements like situational settings, environmental cues, and muted color tones & lighting effects. To put it simply, elements that make us feel chill and cozy. I’ll point these things out in my own illustration as we go.

BTW- Before you begin, I really encourage you to listen to Lo-Fi playlists to put you in the chill-cozy mood ;)

2. CHOOSE THE SETTING!

As I previously stated, nostalgia promotes a feeling of comfort. To choose a background setting one has to ask, “Where do I feel most relaxed?” There will inevitably be many answers to this question. Too many answers to present here, but common answers might be one’s bedroom, or a quiet, moonlit city street. Lo-Fi art often often depicts urban settings because Lo-Fi music is part of an urban music culture. The settings are mundane, they are familiar to us, and the familiarity brings feelings of comfort.

The setting does not have to be strictly realistic, it just has to evoke the chill-cozy. For my piece I chose a to make a bedroom on a spaceship. I thought my illustration could go with Vaporwave music. Vaporwave is kinda spacey feeling with lots of electronic sounds.

 

Whatever setting you choose, just be sure that it has that nostalgic feel. If you feel it, you’re on the right path.

3. CONSIDER THE CHILL-COZY!

Like I said, I chose a bedroom on a spaceship for my setting. Why a bedroom? Again, it’s about the familiarity. When someone sees my illustration, I want the person’s first reaction to be one of comfort. The chill-cozy feeling is the cake, not the icing on the cake. The icing is the sci-fi setting. As artists we often like to drift off into fantastic realms. That’s okay, you can have your cake and eat it too as long as you focus on your primary objective and the ingredients that will lead you there. Let’s talk about the ingredients.

 

Using my drawing as an example I’m going to point out the background elements that were key to evoking the feeling I was going for.

1. Stuffies in the foreground! Stuffed animals denote feelings of innocence and childhood.

 

2. Pet Kitty! A sleepy kitty watches the character on the bed with lazy interest! Loyal pets, like the one here, provide loving warmth to their owners.

 

3. Reclined figure! The character looks at their media device while listening to headphones. This is the essence of leisurely activity!

 

4. Lighting features! This will be explored more with color, but lighting fixtures like the hanging lamps here are like companions and have a personality all of their own.

 

5. Plants! Well-kept and healthy plants are a sign of care and comfort.

 

6. Spaceships! I drew the spaceships outside to look like fish or birds. Visualize fish swimming in an aquarium, or a flock of birds flittering outside your window. These images elicit the feelings of calming environments. I wanted to capture that same feeling with the spaceships.

4. COLOR SCHEME!

Nostalgia promotes feelings of things from one’s past. Simplistic color schemes are easy to interpret when one looks at them and in the right context they can remind us of childhood. I don’t want to get deep into Color Psychology and Color Theory here but to put it simply, colors schemes make us feel things. If you want your picture to grab someone’s attention and say, “Hey you! Feel this particular way when you look at me!”, you can achieve this by limiting your color choices. For example, a Monotone illustration uses variations of only ONE color.

A solitary figure standing in a street painted in a blue Monotone color scheme likely feels melancholy or sad.

Change that color to a warm color like orange and it feels a bit different.

Not completely different but you can still feel the shift.

I personally feel that an Analogous color scheme helps achieve this same goal of pointing the viewer towards a particular feeling while allowing for a broader color spectrum than a Monotone color sceme. Put simply, an Analogous scheme gives you more colors to work with while delivering a similar emotional punch!

I chose the cool colors: blue, pink and purple because I wanted this to be a nighttime setting. Sometimes cool colors and tones can express feelings of “sadness,” like in my Monotone blue drawing example. In this drawing I deflect potential feelings of sadness by surrounding the figure with all the elements I described previously, in step 3. I filled the background with things that indicate feelings of “safety” and “comfort.”

5. LIGHTING EFFECTS!

Using a one-two knockout punch as a metaphor, if a limited color scheme is the first punch, then lighting is the second punch. Color will help you achieve an intended emotion in an illustration, and lighting effects will enhance that emotion.

If you don’t feel that confident painting lighting effects I would suggest using Clip Studio's Gradient Tool. A simple gradient can go a long way by implying a sense of interior space and creates a mood depending on one’s color choice. See the difference between the white background on the left and the orange gradient on the right? The image on the right seems more warm, dynamic and cheerful.

For my finished Lo-Fi illustration I used soft lighting from the media device in the character’s hand and stronger, more intense lighting from the hanging lamps. The bright lights (and color) highlight the character, bringing them into stronger focus. Let’s take a look at that.

The light is serving two functions. It’s telling the viewer where to look, and how to feel when they gaze upon the illustration. The illuminated figure, in vivid pink, draws the viewers’ focus. The pink figure is in sharp contrast to the muted purple and blues of the background. One then focuses on the soft-lit figure in bed. The character is focused on the media screen in front of them; their facial expression is one of relaxed contentment. The viewer reacts, feeling the chill-cozy feeling, matching that of the character in the illustration.

 

 

Thanks for reading! I hope you came away from this tutorial with some tricks & tools that will help you make a Lo-Fi illustration in your own art style!