Design Ideas Logo
Five more Minutes

Five more Minutes

Nicole Pico Mantilla
October 10, 2019
1 Comment

Five More Minutes is of an illustration of a girl hugging a pillow done in black and white. Utilizing minimal form and stylized line art Five more Minutes is part of a daily drawing Instagram challenge in which the month of October 2019 I push myself to illustrate a new composition in this style every day. Interplaying between line weights, negative space, and abstract composition my illustration aims to highlight the comedic insights into many of our early mornings.



To give you a bit of background into my art process it is usually inspired by the human form, organic shapes, and un-staged scenery/people around us. Once I find an image of something that captivates me I play around with it to make it my own. Currently, the style and black and white color choices are inspired by a daily Instagram drawing challenge I am doing in which every day for the next month I am playing with this minimal line art style in order to push myself to get over creative dead blocks and experiment with composition. If your interested in following the process or seeing more illustrations in this manner my Instagram is: White Buffalo Imprints.


In order to make my design I used a program called Procreate with my iPad and stylus as it preserves the hand-drawn effect to my designs. Starting by blocking out the main composition, some of the things I like to do to achieve a more stylized finish is play with line weights, draw without picking up my pen for as long as I can, and also sketch in fast intervals in order to depict a more minimal form and capture only the essential to the final product. In this stage I try to not overthink the form so much, some of the best shapes are created when you let yourself just go with it. Finally, I overview the image as a whole and begin playing with the different sections to edit the composition where needed. With the added benefit of working on layers, I am able to take the best parts of each sketch and combine them to make this final effortless appearing artwork.

As I mentioned previously I tend to like to draw un-staged scenery, so what I loved about this photo and what I wished to convey is the authenticity behind the emotion we feel when our alarm goes off in the morning and the comedic value to our desire for “Five more minutes”. As a personal takeaway, this project was an experimentation with dark and negative space as I choose to fill her hair in black rather than just focusing entirely on line art in my illustration as I have done in some of my previous works.

Nicole Pico Mantilla

When it comes to design the possibilities for what you can create are endless. Our main obstacle in designing is understanding this principle in order to allow ourselves to give way to ideas in whichever way they choose to present themselves. Majoring in Interior Design I myself have experienced this revelation as I stumbled upon my passion for surface and graphic design. Going back to my roots in art, my biggest challenge was trying to find a system that would allow me to meld the natural drawing experience with the capabilities of graphic design. That's when I stumbled across the power of a stylus and iPad. Now able to combine my worlds, creating was the only thing left to do. Today I continue to explore all realms of styles and design. Unlike others, I can’t say I have anyone particular style. Playing with a range of color, black & white line work, and abstracted shapes I have found that the one thing in common in all my work is the passion and love I put into it.

One comment on “Five more Minutes”

Leave a Reply to Shane Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *