Build an Illustration Reference Board With a Clear Purpose
Start with what the illustration leaves unresolved. You may need a hand position, a building detail, or a relationship between light and color. Collect for those questions instead of trying to find one image that solves the whole scene.
Keep the collection useful
Keep source sets intact and record creator and origin for outside work. Separate your own studies and finished pieces from collected references. Tags for subject, viewpoint, and lighting can retrieve material across projects without requiring copies for each category. Your working files can sit beside the references: once the workspace's File types shown setting includes them, PSD, Procreate, Krita, and OpenRaster (.ora) files get built-in thumbnails and open in the viewer as a zoomable, flattened image. refern does not show their layers or edit them, so painting stays in your art app. For a folder system that keeps working files, exports, and finals apart, see how to organize digital art files.
| Part of the set | What to record |
|---|---|
| Form | Pose, object shape, or construction detail |
| Light | Direction, shadow quality, and value grouping |
| Color | Palette relationships in their full context |
| Setting | Scale, space, and environmental details |
Build the working selection
Choose a few references for a refern canvas and label the contribution of each. Make the main question easy to see. Place your own sketch nearby when useful and remove references from the board when they no longer serve the direction.
Find and use the references
Use a crop to inspect a detail without rewriting the source image, but keep enough of the full image to understand it. Use a library search when a new question appears rather than growing the canvas into an undifferentiated archive.
Check the handoff
When sharing the finished piece or a process board, check the rights for any reference media included. The board records your research, not a guarantee of originality or improved results. Keep the source media and workspace data backed up.
Normal refern workspace indexing reads existing files in place. Imports and file actions can create or change files. Back up the source media and workspace data that preserves your organizing work.
Continue with Make a Moodboard From Your Own Photos.