The dog digs up Earth in the front yard

Hi there!

Welcome to another fabulous blog entry! With your host...Well actually it's just me. Also the title will make sense, just read on.

I have recent artwork to share and I've started a new sketchbook, but what I wanted to start with today is some older published work.

To start with it was pretty big milestone for me. It was the very first time I've had work in a publication. It also felt great that it was supporting a good cause too! It was so exhilarating! I'll start with background though.

So I was approached by the Director of a local design company looking to commission some illustrations for a publication he was putting together. His client was Melbourne City Mission, a local Non-profit welfare agency supporting vulnerable Victorians. This publication has been going for at least 5 years and is targeted as a school resource book though their youth arm, Frontyard Youth Services. It's aim is to educate school aged children about youth homelessness in Victoria and the avenues the organisation can provide in terms of assistance. As part of the booklet, there are several real-world client stories featured - I was to provide visual context to these stories in the form of a before and after image of them accessing support through Frontyard.


It was my first time illustrating an entire 'story'. The first thing I needed to decide was which images presented within were the most catching and visually interesting. I must've read the stories many times to gauge what most stood out. While the stories are real people, the names have been changed and I had no description of the actual writer to go off, so I had to design the narrator/character as well. It was like trying to imagine what someone looks like when you read their emails or hear them on the phone! After that, the rest of my design process was pretty much the same as you've seen in the Whitney post. Here they are!

Click on any of the thumbnails for a larger image

I came up with a great idea to really make the characters stand out, and to give a good emotional sense of what the reader should be feeling at that point. I used colour to convey this. For the 'before' picture I focused on cool hues, (blues and cool greys). Then with the 'after' image it was opposite: Warm hues (purples and yellows). The narrator was then treated with an opposite colour to their environment., for example Ling is wearing a yellow top in a blue-grey office.

I'm not usually big on interior environments, I find it difficult to visualise a room spatially, but this project really called for interiors, so I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to try them out. Overall I'm quite happy with the result and think it illustrates the stories quite well.

As per usual I couldn't help but stretch my penchant for pattern design into a couple of the images. The houses for Ling were tied to the sentiment left by the narrator about the importance of having a home over your head. Here are some flat versions



I remember how great it felt after I'd completed the work and delivered it to my client, but by the far the best feeling was having a copy of the publication in my hands and seeing the end result. It was just incredible!

Here are some shots of the final product. Aside from the illustrations any other elements remain copyright of their respective owners.

If you'd like to know more about Frontyard or Melbourne City Mission click the links!

Moving on, the other piece I have for you today is my newest entry in a series I try to do every year: Chinese new year. I've been a bit slack getting the last few years done, but here is 2018, Year of the Dog.

I'd actually started this one way back in January of this year, but could quite figure out how I was going to do the rendering. Even when I got up to doing the background relatively recently, I still spent some time trying to decide between drawing and painting it. There's good things that can be said for both methods, and I don't think I can ever decide on sticking to one method. I keep telling myself I should keep things consistent, but I'm starting to realise that it can also stifle creativity to think that way.

Time for some background. Like I recently stated on my Facebook page, one of the reasons I started doing Chinese New Year is that provides lots of imagery and constraints to draw from (pun intended). Making for a rather often unique outcome. This year is certainly an example of that!

The element for 2018 was Earth and not one I've illustrated as yet. Of of the main things I learnt about this element is that it's the balancing one. What I mean by that is it's both Yin and Yang, hence the balancing pose and precarious rock formation. It also symbolises nurturing and what can be more nurturing than raising a bunch of puppies? The whole breast-feeding thing came to me out of nowhere though. Aside from rock, when I think of Earth I think of underground and dampness, so of course I had to include moss and mushrooms. The eyes were a last minute decision. I usually leave the rendering of them as one of the last things I do in an illustration. I was going to with my standard approach, but I thought to myself: "This creature is god-like Reiko, the eyes should be extra impressive!" and what's more deep and impressive than Shoujo galaxy eyes? There are even some stars in there.

Other constraints and imagery from my research include the planet Saturn, the number 9 and using purple and red while avoiding use of blue and gold. If you'd like to know more, have a look at these wikis on Dog (Zodiac) and Earth (Wu Xing).

Here are some detail shots.

I decided the background should be a desert as it gave the best raw example of Earth, there are no plants to confuse it with the Wood element and it fit the colour scheme nicely, well that and I was probably channelling the homeland of Earth-benders from the fantastic animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is a very rocky desert landscape. I might have to look into trying my hand at speed-painting sometime.

As a bonus I also cooked up a flag version of the logo design seen on the Dog-mother's robes. Yes that is a dragon encircling Saturn. You even get to learn some Japanese!

The characters (From top down) read:

Ni - 2
Sen - 1000
Jyuu - 10
Hachi - 8

=2018

Inu - Dog
Tsuchi - Earth

The last two are the symbols for  the planets which date back to Byzantine times

Earth
Saturn

I'm really happy with how this one came out. I love dogs, so this one was a real joy to work on.

Are you still with me? Oh my this was a big post, this must be the most images I've had in a single entry before. Thanks for reading, there's still plenty more to come. I know I mentioned a new sketchbook, but I might get to that in another post, this one has got long enough.

Thanks for reading.

See you next time!

3 designs entered the arena, only one emerged victorious

That's right, I'm here today to announce the winner of my 'Choose the project' competition!

This was first foray into creating a survey and overall I'm rather happy with how everything turned out. I think next time I really need to look at other ways of getting it in front of more eyes, because there really was not a lot of participation going on. This was despite the lure of winning a free print.

However enough about my musings, you're here for the winner aren't you? It sure was a close one and it seemed like the Procession was the design to take the laurels of victory, as for most of the time the survey was open it was in the lead by several votes. In the end though a couple of extra votes towards Pirates in the last day or so saw it take the lead and claim the prize.

Here's a visual representation (a fancy way of saying i made a column graph) of how it all turned out.

As you can see, Pirates only won by a single vote! Party had a lot less love as it only got 3 votes.

I'd like to take a moment to give a big thank you to everyone who took a few minutes out of their busy lives to enter the competition. Thank you for your support and interest in my work. Also I hope I didn't annoy people too much with my continued Facebook posts about voting. I hope you enjoyed being part of the creative process.

Now it's time to start developing the design as chosen by you, the people. I'm really looking forward to developing Pirates to it's full potential and will endeavour to keep you well informed of it's progress. Once the final artwork is all finished and done, I'll announce the winner of the free print. Good luck to all!

Here's another look at the rough that gets to go all the way to the top:

I'm going to try and make sure I post plenty of in-progress images for this work, particularly since I've already shown you what the rough looks like.

Watch this space!

^_^ Thanks for reading

The 3 P's - Procession, Pirates or Party?

Hey there blog watchers, I haven't seen you since January, (totally my fault). It's been some time, so I thought I'd do something exciting for my new post. Details below.

While I was designing my Chinese new year illustration for 2016, I came up with 3 distinctly different ideas. Usually this is a normal part of the design process: To pick one to finish and discard the rest. Then I thought, why not involve others in the process? I want YOU to decide which rough I should bring to finished artwork. I'm going to dub this idea "Choose the project," catchy title yeah?

Of course you should be possibly rewarded for your hard work, so 1 (one) lucky person shall receive a FREE A4 fine-art print of the finished illustration. I'll be choosing an entrant at random. If you would like to enter, please make sure you fill in question 2 so I can get into contact with you to send you your new art.

You can find the link to the survey below. It's only 2 questions and some contact info, so it shouldn't take very long at all...Unless you're the kind of person to agonise over which one to choose, in which case your guess would be as good as mine. Please make sure you do the actual survey, if not you're entry won't count and the hard work will be for naught.

Choose the project: Chinese New Year 2016
 

See the worlds of possibilities below. Remember, only YOU can decide the path I shall take. Will it be Pirates, Procession or Party? Happy voting and good luck for the draw (if you choose to enter). Just also keep in mind that being rough as these are, changes are likely to occur, (that's the nature of the creative process), though mostly this will be detailing, the basic design and structure will remain.

I'll be posting again in a few weeks to confirm the winning rough that I'll be taking through to finished art, so look forward to that.

Thanks for reading, be back real soon.