Project: El Palmar logo

A friend had the idea to create a logo/illustration for the seaside town where we live which could be used on t-shirts and postcards as we get a fair few holiday makers passing through, especially in the summer. Apart from the beach there's not really much here...

Spider diagram and thumbnails

Favourite thumbnails in different shapes

Pen drawing

It was difficult to decide between the oval and the circle, but I thought the elongation exaggerated the height of the tower so chose the oval.

Live traced and scanned the cleaned up version in illustrator

Made a rough coloured version in photoshop

Got some feedback, changed the umbrella to a grass one and added a surfboard

Coloured it in photoshop

This is a good start but the colours look a bit flat to me so I’d like to add some texture. Here's the textured version (granulated filter), the colours are less bright because of the texture but it's more interesting.

I experimented a bit and settled on a blue background for the postcards as it makes the colours more 'zingy'. I ordered some samples today.

Having listened to feedback I think that this version is less likely to appeal to men or boys because it’s a bit ‘pretty’ so I inverted the black and white version with a view to screen printing it on a black t-shirt.

I added some doodly patterns for interest and contrast

Having printed it out I was then drawn back to the circular version

I like this but having spent so long cleaning and smoothing the design I now wish is was a bit more rustic and hand drawn, but this is a good start.

I then made a minor adjustment to the wave shape on the right side to make the emergence smoother.

Project:Casa Gaia Logo

Some time ago I heard that a couple that live locally were looking for a logo for their house, from which they run various ecological, spiritual and creative workshops  http://casagaia.co.uk/?page_id=225.

It piqued my interest at the time but took me a while to get round to making a spider diagram of ideas and some thumbnail sketches, which I then sent to them. 

They gave me some very positive feedback and have some ideas of their own regarding colours for a web version and a black and white version which can be easily photocopied so we’ll meet at the end of this week to talk about taking things further. In the meantime I’ll redo their favourite thumbnails with the changes they suggested.

Money is tight in these parts (southern Spain) so we’ve agreed that payment will be in the form of units of the local alternative currency (the Jandita) which was set up by a small group of us last year in an effort to keep things moving amongst the local community despite the economic crisis. This will be my first major transaction in Janditas which is very exciting.

I met with my prospective client and in the meantime we’d all had other ideas about elements that could be included (e.g. the cyclical nature of nature especially pertaining to water) or excluded from the logo (e.g. the sea) and what actually constitutes a logo rather than an illustration.

I took some photos of details of the house, garden and sketches they’d made with other friends with design experience and did some more research

http://justcreative.com/2010/04/06/branding-identity-logo-design-explained/

http://logooftheday.com/page/29/

First I made a vector version of their favourite sketch (which their friend had done) using photoshop and illustrator

Then changed the house door to a water drop to introduce the water element

Then I applied the same treatment to one of my sketches which was inspired by a chat we had about ‘volunteer’ plants (those that just sprout out of nowhere) and starting with small actions – represented by the seedling; the water cycle – represented by the drop and spiral. The house is balanced on top representing sustainability.

I tried to keep an element of the hand drawn in all the vector sketches as my potential client said she preferred this.

I have sent them the sketches and am waiting for their feedback.

Sunday 17th March: Art highs and lows

The annual street market of art and crafts was scheduled to take place last Sunday in Vejer de la Frontera, a beautiful white Andalucian town where I lived until recently.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=418116394939109&set=a.107416662675752.15777.100002222567513&type=1&relevant_count=1

I was going to set up a stall of my postcards and prints of Vejer, but sadly it was postponed because of the risk of bad weather...in the end it didn't rain, but I did go into town for the opening of two wonderful exhibitions in La Casa del Arco:

Mónica Rueda 'Berlin' 
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.560910560594178.1073741826.159121304106441&type=1

Lovely, loose paintings using charcoal and acrylic (one of my current favourite combinations) showing excellent drawing skills; capturing the movement and humanity of a bustling city with an astute sense of perspective and light. Mónica works as a dental technician and is self taught as an artist, she told me that although her job is very artistic in a sculptural sense she loves the freedom of working on a larger scale with looser materials.

Mariano Résquin 'Vecinos' (Neighbours)
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.560910000594234.1073741825.159121304106441&type=1

Mariano's lovely series of photos of people of Vejer in their working environments is another celebration of humanity. Mariano has made the people tiny; there's a sense of humour, warmth, intimacy and tenderness here which is doubtless exaggerated by the change of scale and really warms the heart. I know most of the subjects and he's really captured them beautifully.

On the whole the exhibition had a really good reception but I was a bit sad and disappointed by the reaction of a few people; one dismissing Mariano's photos as 'just photoshop really' and others saying they were unimpressed with Mónica´s paintings. Both artists have shown incredible imagination, drive, discipline, technical and artistic skills to put together their series of images, maybe it takes another artist to really appreciate that.

I will be exhibiting in La Casa del Arco next (end June-mid September), sharing the space with a Spanish artist I was introduced to on Sunday who showed me a wonderful little sketch book of punning cartoons he´d drawn. I´m very excited at the prospect but nervous at the same time as it seems very important to make the most of this opportunity. Luckily I can rely on the kindness and generosity of the experienced Casa del Arco folk to help me put my best art foot forward...the audience is another matter.


Next I went to see the photographic exhibition 'Ojos de Chaouen' (Eyes of Chaouen) at the hotel Casa del Califa
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=542926265748310&set=a.119558928085048.8819.119553218085619&type=1&theater

Jesús Botaro depicts the humanity of the vividly and beautifully blue Moroccan village Chefchaouen, which is 'twinned' with Vejer, but there´s no posing here; the people are going about their business as if the camera wasn´t there. The sense of light and colour captured in this series of photos is really strong and uplifting.


My last 'job' of the day was in a bar in Vejer. One of the new owners had approached me about a month before and asked if I would put up some of my prints and postcards of the town in the bar in exchange for them being up for sale...yes, of course, what a nice opportunity. Unfortunately I got knocked out by the flu for a week or so in the meantime, as soon as I could I sent a message to apologise for the delay and advise that the prints were ready and the framing would take another week. Fine, she said. Then on Sunday, when I turned up, her business partner decided that there was no room for my prints, that I was too late and that the nasty generic pictures from a 'Homebase' type chain they'd put up were preferable...luckily my friend was with me, she reminded me that this goes with the territory, that the man has poor taste and that it was his loss. Disappointing to say the least....

To be fair, I went back a couple of days later to put up my framed postcards and the man with poor taste told me they looked lovely and gave me a slice of very tasty cake.

Here's a picture

Exercise: Character development

I started with a web search,

https://www.google.es/search?q=character&hl=en&rlz=1C1AVSA_enES462&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=70YoUZioH4-whAfhyoGQCA&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=785#imgrc=8JGDtPwXFw2ZPM%3A%3Bxur0KEj7qffSzM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ffc09.deviantart.net%252Ffs32%252Ff%252F2008%252F209%252Fe%252F3%252FCharacter_Design_by_Tobitkiwi.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ffitrianijafar.blogspot.com%252F2012%252F10%252Fcharacter-design.html%3B999%3B1511 

this site has a great example of a 360 degree depiction of a middle aged man

http://toonjamstudios.com/cartoon-services-business-cartoons/cartoon-character-designer/?nggpage=2

and another cartoon of a famous middle aged man amongst other celebrities, I like these for their sparse clearness http://toonjamstudios.com/cartoon-illustrator-for-hire/

I also love these Judy Brown cartoons for their looseness and humour http://www.judybrown.co.uk/illustration_galleries.html

especially the baby http://www.judybrown.co.uk/Black_and_white1/4_little_o.html

and the dancing dog http://www.judybrown.co.uk/digital_art_gallery1/7_dancing_dog_cartoon.html

Great little film about the designing of Meg from the Disney short Paperman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bls4Tz_WEuQ&NR=1&feature=endscreen

I find these children by Sarah Preston very sweet and expressive

http://www.lemonadeillustration.com/work/?page=1&artist=196&name=http___www.lemonadeillustration.com_sarahpreston&cat=1&id=114

I collected together some photos of friends who are pretty cartoonish, and I mean that as a compliment, and decided to try some sketches of them - but this page turned into an experimental scribble, which although hard to decipher threw up some possibilities for development and was a good exercise in facial expressions....so far they mostly only have heads....

I found this excellent image to help me with the 360 degree views of a female figure http://www.figuredrawingtemplates.com/female-figure-drawing/
and used it as a guide while drawing my character's body. I chose the girl because she came out of nowhere and had quite a personality. This is the pencil sketch, 

she's mostly naked so now it's time to dress and colour her.

Looking back through my sketch book I was inspired by some of the sketches for the part 2 exercise 'Turning words into pictures' to use water based ink and felt tip pen with a wash of water to colour my character 'Lydia'

I tweaked the contrast and brightness in photoshop and multiplied the layers to make her a little bolder.

I think I've made a good start to this exercise, with a range of costumes and expressions to show the character in different roles; I particularly like the serene swimsuit pose. The drawings are a bit messy but I quite like the informality of them.

Here's my second character, developed from the set of heads on my initial page of sketches.

I decided to try drawing with my tablet, he's a bit rough and ready because I drew him quickly but I think his personality comes out in each pose despite that. This exercise was fun.

Reflection

I'm almost 4/5 of the way through the course and feel like, well partly like, I'm just hitting my stride by finally being willing/able to explore my ideas through drawing rather than looking for excuses not to draw or to keep it to a minimum, but also that's taking me to all sorts of diversions from the course work like designing logos (I'm not a graphic designer and it involves a whole lot of new stuff to research and I don't have time to do half the experiments I think of...) and preparing for an art market and exhibitions.

It's exciting in a slightly chaotic and self doubting way, but I'm still no nearer to finding my 'one particular style'. I love the softness and depth of charcoal and its ability to soak up quick acrylic colour washes, but I also love the smooth simplicity of pencil sketches; their rough immediacy and 'unfanciness' and I also love making vector tweaked images from pen drawings....Jack of all materials...

I have learnt a huge amount, my drawing and digital skills are improving and I now have the urge to go back over nearly all the exercises I have completed and hone the final images (so far I have only managed to update the jazz poster for assignment 3 http://kathrynhockeyocalog.blogspot.com.es/search?updated-max=2012-11-10T14:27:00-08:00&max-results=20 
and the autumn image for assignment 2 http://kathrynhockeyocalog.blogspot.com.es/search?updated-max=2012-05-24T03:20:00-07:00&max-results=20&start=13&by-date=false).

Do I have the time/ discipline/ dedication/ skills to finish the course in the time allowed? Part 4 is pretty big and I'm a bit stuck, indecisive and distracted by the characterisation exercise...time to plunge in again... 

Commission: Portrait

A friend asked me to make a portrait of her with her dog so I started by taking lots of photos which I whittled down and sent to her, flagging my favourites. She gave me the last word and I chose the pose which seemed most natural and loving.

I made an initial sketch in pencil 

this was fine in terms of my friend but the dog didn't look quite right so I printed the photo at the same size and traced it to see where I'd gone wrong, then redrew the dog.

Unfortunately I forgot to visually document the following stages: new pencil outline; charcoal, acrylic washes, more charcoal. 

The finished portrait, which my friend likes very much.