Monday 19 May 2014

Snow with friends

Hi there everybody,
sorry about the wait between posts, but I started a full time job in March and haven't had much time to do things of an illustration nature, which is a true shame. Still, with my contract ending in a week, I'll either be looking for a new job or hopefully changing to part time in my current job, either way I should soon have time for my real passion.

So today, I have once again an illustration gift for a friend. This particular friend loves penguins, (her house is full of penguin plushies). So it was pretty obvious where my direction came from in this piece. The main thing I wanted to try in this was to paint a background and I'm fairly happy with how that came out. I also decided on some very Scandinavian patterns, partly because I love geometric patterns, but also because I see it everywhere at the moment. So many people are wearing jumpers with these types of patterns. Th pattern on the scarf are snow covered leafless trees, I was impressed with how nice this simple pattern worked

I looked to colour starting with a purple, as it's my friend's favourite colour. this also worked in compliment with the oranges in the emperor penguin's colouring.

I was so happy when she decided to display it next to her television, to give it such a prime position, she must really love it.



How you enjoyed the piece, see you next time ^_^

Thursday 10 April 2014

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...

Saturday 1 March 2014

Horsey with magic birds and a revival


Hey there people!

Posts seem to come with two and today is no exception! As per usual I have two new artworks for you today. So without further small talk I'll get straight into it!


 

So this first image was done for my traditional Chinese new year illustration. You might remember last years work for year of the snake? This year being horse, I had the option to draw a mount, which I always love doing. A bit of further research showed that one of the five Chinese elements is also associated with the year, this year being wood. There are also colours, symbols, seasons and even planets associated with the element. This gave me plenty of direction in my self-brief.

I thought this time I got through the sketch and line-work stages much quicker than usual, though I still think I could be quicker. The biggest challenge in this work was working out a good and stylised way to "texturise" the wood, which I think worked quite nicely.

Now to the story behind logo on the wind barrels. It turns out the planet Jupiter is associated with wood, so I wanted some way to include that in the art. I remembered from a previous piece of work that all the Roman gods and thus planets had a graphic symbol to represent them, and obviously what you see on the barrels is the symbol for Jupiter. Out of pure coincidence the symbol also looks like a two and a four for 2014! I love it when things like that happen.

As you might've noticed I've included detail shots, which I think I might do from now on. Often I have  details in my work that really can't be seen properly in these web quality versions.

Now onto the next work...

 Before

  
After


This next piece is a little different from my usual work. It's actually my take on one of my sister's creations. That's right, my sister is an artist of sorts too. She dabbles in collage and crafts, mainly sewing and knitting. She does some great work, though she won't admit it herself. I'd be plugging her website here, but she doesn't yet have one yet.

So as you've probably gathered, the top image is my sister's original and the after is my take on it. I simply decided to do this because I liked her character, but also because I wanted to try "complexifying (tm)" a quite stylistic design.  

I tried to keep as close to the original as possible, however I did tweak the colours a bit and decided for fun to add some birds, two of which are birds my sister likes (namely the fairy wren and the barn owl), the others are made up. The particularly daunting task in this image was the pattern on the skirt. I couldn't decide whether to opt for a scan of a illustration from the same book as the original or attempt to draw my own in the same style. In the end I though it might look at bit too busy full of really complex line work, so I opted to do it myself and rather pleased with the result.

Vicky was actually really proud that I used her creation, which made us both feel good!

One last thing to post, I lied. A while back I worked on a new version of my 2012 image (year of the dragon) So I though I really should update my blog with the improved version, so here it is.

Pretty much the only major change to the original is the pattern on the kimono, which was supposed to look like stylised fire works, but I don't think it really worked that well. Most of the rest are just adding more detail or tweaking shadows.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I've recently joined 'Drawcrowd,' a community site for sharing illustration and concept art with other artists. It was created by the ever generous Feng Zhu, who I ranted about before. He continually gives back to his industry in ways that are awe inspiring. So what are you waiting for? Check it out here! You can find a link to my page on Drawcrowd in the contact section of this blog.

Well that's it from me, time to get back to drawing. What's next you say? Well it involves penguins!

Thanks for reading.