I've just realised that I haven't posted on my blog since Christmas last year... Things have been busy. After Christmas last year I headed overseas for a holiday in Bali. I spent most of my time in Ubud and really loved the experience. After returning home from Bali a week-and-a-bit into January, the work hasn't stopped. Work for me in 2012 started with a number of corporate jobs; annual reports and branding/identity work. After knocking over a few big projects, my usual gig as a design teacher started again for the semester. During Feb, March & April, I juggled full-time teaching work with freelance design work. ...And in the last three weeks I've been working predominantly in a new role as a Publications & Promotions Officer at the school I currently work at. I've well and truly hit the ground running. Its been very busy, but that's how I like it! I've also been doing a little writing about branding and marketing, I hope to have that ready to post here in the next fortnight. But for now I'll leave you with a little illustration I just finished; a cute little kid selling drinks at his little lemonade stand. I'm not sure quite what inspired me to do this one, but I felt compelled to create something bright and fun.
Here are some images to illustrate my process:
I generally always start an illustration by creating a rough. When I say 'rough', I mean really rough. While working at this stage in the process I like to work quickly, just to visually jot down my ideas. From this point I block in many vector shapes to add a little colour and start bringing my rough draft to life. For this illustration I was tinkering with a new, predominantly digital process. As I'm so busy, I really have limited time to create and working digitally gives me the freedom to quickly undo my mistakes and trial different ideas that I may not have risked working with traditional methods and mediums.
After this point, I continued to work in Illustrator, putting in details like the trees, little tufts of grass and the fence. I also decided to change the colour of the roof, as it needed a lift. This is shown below in the finished illustration.
To complete the illustration, I started work in Photoshop. Adding a really subtle texture to the ground, clouds and bark on the trees. The shadows were created with my trusty wireless Wacom tablet. I also enhanced the lemonade stand by adding a real timber texture to its exterior. At that point, I decided that my work was done... Although an artwork or illustration is never complete. I'm a perfectionist, and I could work forever on an illustration or design job, whether it be personal or commercial. Anyway, there's a little about some processes I've been tinkering with. I love reading about the creative processes of other creatives and I hope to share a little more of my here soon.
Now to finish off that branding and marketing essay, and the pile of work I need to complete before Monday for my day job...
Cheers, Mal