Desert lemons and a little red dot.

Hi Hi,

I don't know about you, but I think it's round about time I showed you some new work. Sound good? Let's get started!

My new work for today is a recent piece done once again for the lovely people at Happy. My subject this time around was Long Island band The Lemon Twigs. Once again, the scope being a landscape illustration to accompany a interview. These guys are full-on retro (both through music and style), so it was quite a unique one to work on.

Like with previous works, I'd never heard of the group, so like with the last two illustrations I've done, I gathered up their Youtube clips and left them on repeat, particularly while researching and sketching. I find listening to songs many times allows you to notice things that might not be picked up the first time through as well as discovering what really stands out in the imagery, (visually from the music videos and described in the lyrics). These make it onto a list (I like making lists) of things that I decide must be worked into the image. Then it's a matter of taking the elements and arranging them in a strong composition. It's a rather methodical way to work and probably the reason why I really struggle with whimsy and spontaneity when I'm working in my sketchbook. In short, I overthink things sometimes. Here's the image!

It's a little bit predictable to feature both lemons and a twiggy tree, but I just couldn't help it. My heaviest inspiration comes from the clip 'As long as we're together' I felt it really captured the glammy retro feel better than their other clips, which was exactly what I was going for. The colour scheme was perfect too. Soft pastel colours give that 'old school,' (do people still say that?) feel.

My first sketch just had both brothers standing next to each other, but I found despite the greater difficulty, I really wanted to draw Michael in a more animated pose. He's always jumping all over the place in the videos and it also makes for a more interesting composition.

Costume-wise I was originally going to go with something really full on, but decided on shirts. As always, I wanted to engage my penchant for pattern design and I thought it might be overkill to have costumes and detailed patterns in the one image.Even having complex 70's drop-repeat patterns on both their shirts made the eyes jump all over the picture, so I simplified Michael's patterning to just spots. It keep focus on Brian's shirt and leads into the rest of the image.

For the background, being a quick turn-around I needed something quick and easy, but also something I could practice painting with. I'm still relatively new to background painting, so it's one of my major goals this year to really get a handle on it. It'll really open up many more possibilities for things I want to create in the future. Desert was great for this: It's relatively flat and uncomplicated, but still has lots of hue and texture changes. The tree was also quite fun to do. I was going to paint it from scratch, but since I wanted it to stand out a little more I kept outlining in there.

Screen-caps from Happy's website where the article was featured when it was published in April. It was even featured on the homepage for about a week, which is pretty awesome.

Read the full article here.

Thanks to Happy and Tom Cameron for the opportunity.


In other news, I've made a sale! Down goes the auction hammer, BANG "SOLD!" - Though it wasn't an actual auction of my work, who can't help but imagine such a scene?

Back in May I had a piece of my work featured in a group exhibition held by Illustrators Australia, (or IA for short) in Collingwood Gallery, here in Victoria on a lovely Autumn day.  It ran from May 5th to May 30th and was called 'paper to pixel.' It was certainly a good turnout of illustration talent; 68 amazing pieces of art were on display, each one more different than the last. Check out photos from the opening night of the event on IA's facebook page here. The exhibition was even featured in the weather segment on channel 10 (a major television network here in Australia). It felt pretty cool to have my artwork featured on TV, even though it's not like it was dominant in any way.

Many artworks had already been sold by the end of opening night, which was great. Little telltale red spots stuck next to the works indicated a sale. Unfortunately, my work was not among them.

That was until early June when I received a congratulatory email from IA saying that my print had been sold! I was super ecstatic. I was having lunch in the meal room at my day job casually checking my emails when I saw it. I did a little dance in my seat and probably looked really weird to all my colleagues surrounding me. The money didn't feel that important, it was the recognition that did it for me. Imagining that someone looked at my artwork among all others in that gallery and said "I want to buy this" and spent their money on it. Thank you, whoever you are! Something that I created from nothing was worth something to another. It. Was. Fantastic.

The work itself was going to be a new piece I was working on specifically for the exhibition, but I challenged myself a little too much, given the limited time I have in my life for illustration. It's based on a project for a client that fell through, for which I'd already done some designs and sketches for. I really don't like discarding things I've put time into, so it was a perfect candidate for the exhibition.Time however, did not allow it's completion, so instead I had to quickly chose one of my recent works.
 

Remember this one? See the full blog entry about it here.

I'm a proud member of IA, see my portfolio page here.

Well that's it for another blog entry, I've been doing some sketching lately which I should be uploading at some point in the not-too-distant future, stay tuned for that. I'm not sure if I'll make a new blog entry, but it will definitely get a mention on social media. I'll also upload it into my sketchbook section on here.

Other plans for the future are a couple of designs I thought would make some great t-shirt. So I've thinking of vectoring them up and submitting to Threadless. I've got some other stuff to finish first however, so not sure when I'll get to that.

Thanks for feasting your eyes.

Bartering sheep

Hi there, you might hardly believe it, but I've just completed a new post for you mere weeks after the last. I have not one, but two new pieces to show. Shocked? I'm trying really hard to push myself to spend more time on this thing I love called illustration. "But what does this mean for me?" I hear you ask. Well to answer your question, I hope it means updates more often and more work to share. Now let's get into it.

First up, I've got an illustration I completed of local Melbourne musician Ali Barter. This was originally going to be for a client, but due to some unforeseen circumstances, it was never published. I left it alone for several weeks and then one day decided it was a waste of my time and effort not to finish something I'd already spent a considerable amount of time on. So here it is!

Colourful, no? I'd never heard of Ali before, so like I mentioned in my previous post, research was key. I found myself particularly drawn to the bright colours and style found in her clip of the song Hypercolour, so I that was my main inspiration. Just the term made me imagine super-bright and high impact colour schemes. The flowers were inspired by the same clip, though in this instance they're magically growing from the guitar itself. I think it strengthens the sense of 'hypercolour:' Almost sickly bright flowers.

In terms of background, the clip for one of her newest songs, Girlie bits features synchronised swimming, so I thought, how about a pool without water as a setting? I had a tight deadline originally with this work, so I had to keep things fairly uncomplicated. The tiles I think make a for simple but very catching design. I've always loved drawing environments where nature has taken over, so expect to see more of those as my background painting skills improve. I discovered working on this, that though guitars seem like a relatively easy thing to draw, they can take some time to get right. I'm still not 100% on spot with line drawing using my tablet, so it took a few attempts to get the strings where I wanted them. I'm particularly happy with the way the eyes came out.

Up next is a personal work I've been working on bit by bit over the last couple of years. As you can probably imagine, producing a work over such an extended amount of time often leads to many changes. The lengthy production period mainly stemmed from my desire to try my hand at painting the background. If you look through most of my work, it's either got no background at all or a very simple drawn one if any. I was very apprehensive to start it once I got up to that point. Which I know is kinda silly given that in Photoshop, everything can be undone.

I'm not entirely sure what I was going for with this image...I'm guessing sheep were likely the starting point. I think I was watching The Musketeers at the time and really loved their... shoulder capes? Which lead on to considering a striking heraldry logo: I started out in graphic design, so I always like to find ways to combine it with my illustrations. All this doesn't really fit with a simple sheep farmer, so let's just say that in this world sheep farming is considered a noble profession. The idea behind the glowing gem in the crook is that it in some way hypnotises the sheep to follow her. The design of her hair eludes me and is lost to time.

Working on a piece across such a long period of time was a great way to sense my progression as an artist, there are some things here that are quite different to how I do them now. Though I did try my best to change little to keep it in line with the original. The major thing I tweaked were the colours, mainly to harmonise them with the recent idea I had for the background. I was originally going to use a textured brush, but decided against it: I'd read from a few artists that it's best to start with the basic flat default brush until you get a feel for painting.

Considering it's one of my first attempts to paint digitally, I'm quite happy with how it all turned out. I think the sense of distance is captured quite well, particularly with the foreground grass. I'm always amazed with how plain background can be to still have a good feel of the environment. The stone sign, (in an unknown language so you know it's not Earth) shows the distance to the next city. Perhaps our sheep herder is taking her flock to trade? As a bonus to the detail shots I quickly drew up a completed graphic of the heraldry shield. Sometimes these things look better flat.

I'm currently trying out a 'sketch a day' exercise to speed up my drawing skills, So I'll probably make a new section or possibly add to my sketchbook section.

Well that's it for this post...next time I'm hoping to have something done from a galaxy far away. Thanks for reading!

Whitney by the lake

Hi there blog watchers! You can blame the Where's Wally animated series and it's over-the-top narrator for me always opening posts like this.

Today I'm sharing my newest piece of work, done for the lovely people at Happy, a Sydney-based online music and culture magazine. You may remember them from my illustration of the band Cull, which I did for them way back in April 2014. They were extremely happy (pun intended) with the outcome and frankly so was I! This time I was asked to draw Chicago based indie-rock band Whitney. This time I'd like to share my whole creative process for this work.

This brief had the same requirements as last time, a landscape piece featuring the band that was otherwise completely open to interpretation. I was asked to include only Max and Julian in my illustration, as they are the official members of the group. Like last time it was to accompany an interview with the band and also be featured on the main page of their website.

As a first step with any work I undertake, the first step was research. I immersed myself in all things Whitney: I watched video clips, read reviews and of course an image search of the subjects themselves. As per usual, it's the visuals that often influence me the most, so their music-videos is where most of my inspiration for the composition came from.

Throughout my research I jot down a quick list of imagery and ideas I might like to include in the work, this helps keep my idea simple and focused, which was especially important given the short amount of time I had available for production. The notes for this work include:

• Wilderness
• Pastel colours
• Desaturated colours
• Roses
• Autumn
• Shoes and rolled up pants

 The next step is to start sketching! Although I mainly complete my work digitally these days, I still find pencil to paper my preferred method for getting my concept down. These thumbnails are usually pretty small, (about 10cm max) so they are usually very rough and basic. I'm concerned more about the composition than accuracy at this point. This is quite evident when you look at the final artwork below.

I decided I really wanted to include their feet in the image, as I found their boots with rolled-up jeans look quite interesting and unique. Given the limited size and orientation it was impossible to draw their full bodies, so I instead opted for a reflection in water. This allowed me to have a tightly cropped image, showing both feet and faces, as well as a great idea for the setting: Many images and particularly the video-clip of No woman feature an Autumn wilderness that really suited my idea, not to mention a great tie-in to their album title 'Light upon the lake'

When I'm happy with the rough I move onto Photoshop.

 I'm currently using Photoshop CS6, one of the last retail versions available before Adobe changed over to subscription-based Creative Cloud. Tablet-wise I'm using a Wacom Intuos 3 - Medium size. It's an older model, before the 16:9 Wide-screen aspect-ratio became standard, so it's active area (4:3) is slightly reduced to conform to my modern display. At times I do consider it might be worth upgrading to one of the newer Intuos Pro models.

Technical stuff aside, once in PS I draw up my thumbnail to a significantly more accurate sketch using a basic brush tool set to a lower opacity. It's quite messy, but you get the idea.

The rest is a fairly simple process, which I'll cover more in-depth for my next post.

• I turn the opacity super low and draw up my final line-work.
• I create a fills layer below and drop in flat colours, this can sometimes take time for me to get right.
• I add a shades layer, using a fairly desaturated blue/purple set to multiply as this takes into account the base colours underneath.
• The rest of the steps can very depending on the work, but this is when I usually add highlights and other textual effects. 

That's pretty much it for the process. Below you'll see the final artwork along with a couple of close-ups of Max and Julian's faces. You'll notice I flipped the faces from the original sketch. When I'd finished the final line work I noticed I forgot to take into account the mirror reflection in the water.

My original idea was to paint the background leaves rather than doing my usual cell-shading look, but unfortunately I didn't come up with anything I was too pleased with. I really need to work on painting, as cell-shading does have it's limitations for background work. It was a shame, but I'm still real pleased with the outcome.

Read Happy Mag's interview here.

Thanks for reading. I'll hopefully have some more work for you all soon.

Cull in the void

So today I have something very special to share. My very first professional job. I received this job through email after the lovely Lulu Rae saw my Loop profile. Let this be a lesson to all that you should keep free portfolio websites up to date, they are just important as the ones you pay money for.

I was stoked! I couldn't believe someone actually wanted me to do work for them! I was to illustrate a band for Happy, which is a NSW based blog and web-zine that promotes local indie music acts.

The band in question was Cull, a NSW band that classify their style as friendrock/dreamgaze. These are not genres I'm at all familiar with, so I would suggest you have a listen here. You can also check out their website. I'm going to be honest and say that I hadn't heard of them before I started this work.

"Wow, let me just say first! Amazing illustration!!
We all love it. Thank you so much."

After a few back and forth emails about the requirements for the image, I set myself into research mode, which is always the first thing I do. This involved going on the bands Facebook page, website and Youtube channel. The later was for drawing (Pun!) inspiration from the visuals in their videos and the music itself. I concluded the music made me think about the unknown, particularly the great unknown expanse of the galaxy and universe itself. I considered the emptiness and excitement of space exploration, the final frontier as Star Trek calls it (big fan by the way). This was also helped by the clip to their newest single 'The Sacred Burial Urn' which features footage from a 1960's era science fiction. So I did some research into retro sci-fi and spacesuits, since being a portrait I need would something for the band to wear. Research done.

So into my sketchbook I went, though the entire process of the final artwork was digital, I still find it easier to sketch on paper first. This took about 4 hours or so, which is pretty quick for me. The whole time I was listening to Cull's Youtube channel on repeat to really get in the mood.

"You're so lovely!
I'm so glad you're as happy with everything as we are.
We are stoked!"

When it came to the band's faces, I ran into some difficulty. I don't often base the faces I draw on real people, and the only times I do is in life-drawing. What made it more difficult, was the lack of good photo-reference on the net. To get more I looked up previous bands the members had been in...I felt like a stalker!


The next step was to use my sketches to work up the line work in Photoshop. I usually start quite rough and slowly develop the drawing as I go. You might ask why the line art in red rather than the traditional black (which is what I usually do)? I knew that the background would be space, which is black (no, really?), so I thought black lines would mostly be lost in the background. Next time I do an artwork I'll be sure to take some screen-grabs so I can show my process in pictures. Until then, you must wait.

Most of the rest of the process is fairly self-explanatory, but I'll go into more detail when I have pictures to support what I'm saying. After being happy with the figures I moved on to the background. Now originally I decided to have a space shuttle flying through behind the band, but after finishing the figures I realised it might make the picture look a bit busy (not to mention the size the image would appear on the website would probably render the the shuttle too small to make out properly) and instead opted for a planet (with bonus moon).

So I finished the final image after about a week of fairly continuous work and emailed it to Lulu. What happened next was something I did not expect...

Now I will admit that on a personal level I thought this artwork as one of my best to date. However I didn't expect the fantastic response I received. I've interspersed this post with a few choice quotes by Lulu from our emails (used with permission of course).

"Thank YOU so much Reiko, people like you make it
easy and such a pleasure for us."

Truly, I was awed by her words. I was not expecting such high praise! I've really felt a boost to my confidence as an artist: I never imagined my first job would go so well. But it got even better! I also received a lovely message on Facebook from Alex Sol Watts, one of the members of the band. To get a positive comment from the band as well left me ecstatic.

I hope every job I do from now on turns out as well as this one did. It was such a joy to do. ^_^

Until next time...

Venetian robots and goblins riding a dog, oh my!

Hi there everyone. Sorry again about the infrequency of my updating, I've really got to work on having something to post at the very least once a week, as right now I'm not even getting something out once a month.

Things have been rather busy though, I've finally found myself a job, but no, unfortunately it's not illustration or even design, but retail. It's something though! With some income at last I'll be able to save up some money for printing and gallery space next year. That way I can hopefully get my name out there and start getting some real work. It's true certainly for artists that you need to spend money to make money >.<

In-case you missed it, here's my piece from Illustrators Australia's annual 9X5 exhibition. It was a really interesting piece to work on as I haven't very often worked off a theme that hasn't come from my own head.

I actually sold my piece! My very first sale of art...ever! My wonderful and supportive parents bought it. Now they have the challenge of trying to work out where to put it in the house...one of the walls good for art is already covered in mine and my lovely sister's art.

So if you're interested in some background of it, I shall now provide...

Each year the 9X5 always have a theme, this year it was carnivale, so you can bet there were many artworks of masked characters based on the Venetian carnivale tradition. One of the most curious things I came to learn about the introduction of masks was that it was a way to remove the harsh class system imposed on the citizens of Venice. I loved the idea of hiding something completely different behind the mask.

Anyone who knows my art, will know that I love to mix old and new up in my illustrations. I enjoy taking something historic and trying to futurise (that's so not a word) it, or trying to make something of pure fantasy fit into a historic setting. This was of the latter, A robotic musician playing during the carnivale at the time of the renaissance. I chose a 3/4 back view to show both the illusion of real from the front, in which she (it's a female robot, machines can have genders!) is wearing a period dress, and behind to show the gears and other parts that make it work.

The reason she has a long neck was originally to fit in a speakers that were going to be attached to her shoulders. As this would end up blocking out some of the details I decided to instead have wires trailing over to a speaker somewhere out of view.

I really quite like the effect of graphite on wood, so I think I shall have to experiment with it in the future.

My second piece for you today is my fourth quick concept piece. A suggestion from my sister: To combine goblin and umbrella, I instantly got the idea of using a giant leaf as an umbrella, and just now got myself thinking of Totoro and the classic scene at the bus stop in the rain. Before I knew it, rather than having one goblin I ended up having 2 goblins riding a dog as a sort of trader. travelling the world selling whatever junk they happen to find that they think is worth something.

I've got some more quick concepts just around the corner and some quite detailed Xmas presents in the tunnel too, so look forward to uploads of all of those, eventually. I'm also doing another re-design of my blog banner and a new design for my logo and business card coming too.

Until next time. ^_^