Assignment saying hello Pt2

Putting together an idea and style

Following on from part one, I had a my source of information for the subject (Me) and basic information regarding sizes/card design and some ground “rules”.
My sketchbook at this stage was quickly filling up, I drew things which I could relate to.

• A mini comic strip
• My eye
• My hearing aid
• me as a little girl (My nickname growing up was Emma Boots)
• Emma’s world *
  

Emma’s world

Emma’s world is a very important part of me, it is kinda hard to explain but maybe the best way to describe it is that it is my creative brain! Since I was young I had a tendency to daydream quite a lot, create stories and characters, I used this “world” as a means to escape when life got too hard.

Next, I drew/doodled things that are important to me and moved on to some thumbnail sketches, key ideas being.

• Me drawing on my wacom (drawing a picture of my kids)
• A warrior me (Vikings style) pointing a graphic pen as a weapon.
• A wacom pen patterned card (after wondering if being too literal in my chain of thoughts)
• Drawing on a wacom in space creating the “worlds” – in other words creating my world.
• Me watching my children, with side profile to showcase my hearing aid.

I like the idea of me creating my world the most, maybe with pieces of paper coming out to in a twirl to create a more dynamic piece. From this idea, I’m aware something I get carried away with colour so did some limited colour palette samples on bleed proof paper and with markers, then quickly came to the conclusion or excuse to use colours, As if any exercise for me to play with colours this would be the perfect one! So no limiting my palette this time! I have a design in place now needs to create in a technique that sums up me, what I’m aiming for maybe in a sense of style and methods.

While I could easily use the quick research into the card illustrators as touch upon in part one, I’m aware that this should be more about what inspires me every day.
So we need to take to Instagram, this is where I follow lots of different artists many of them I really like and I have been deeply inspired by since DeviantART days.

Here is a list of a few of them.

• Lois Van Baarle
• Eric Anthony J
• Laia Lopez
• Ross Tran
• Guweiz
• David Belliveau

I think as a source of inspiration I will be using both Loish (Lois Van Beerle) and Guweiz as inspirations for my piece. Normally I would shy away from anything with Loish style as it is a style that is heavily mimicked and copied by artists on Instagram and my personal drive to be able to create a unique style of my own one day. I also aware and know good style foundation comes from the study of many artists. After all, style is almost a fusion of all the artists you’ve studied and mine is slowly growing within itself. What I love about Loish work is how free her work appears on the screen, the movement in her pieces, even when just a basic portrait, her colour palette, and her digital brush strokes.

Then I’m also picking Guweiz, Zheng Wei Gu work is captivating, his digital painting of landscape scenery leaves me in awe, each piece he does sets a tone, tells a story which is what I want to have in my card design.

This stage will be in my personal sketchbook, at this point I think I’ve decided to send my personal sketchbook in with my assessments as it shows a lot of me working on things and figuring things out. While not been drawing as much as been working on research for the exercises and drawing in the main sketchbook it does show my growth still, plus some reason when I draw in this sketchbook I’m looser and more relaxed.
Right the elements I have decided I want to take from Lois and Wei Gu are the flow of the hair and movement that of Lois’ work and the backdrop glow that is found in the works of Wei Gu. Zheng Wei Gu’s work has really pinged my interest in terms of his composition, he seems to center his main subject and creates balance around them I found this method very pleasing on the eyes and would love to revisit his work with a landscape or environment concept piece one day.

As normal when I need inspiration I created a mood board in Pinterest, this time you may notice that from this I’ve created a couple of palettes. It is a method I found from a skillshare class a couple of months ago titled “Fun With Colour: 5 Exercises for Picking Unique Colour Palettes” by Carly Clements. https://www.skillshare.com/classes/Fun-With-Colour-5-Exercises-for-Picking-Unique-Colour-Palettes/934433486?studentRef=580525&via=student-referral&utm_campaign=student-referral-934433486&utm_source=ShortUrl&utm_medium=student-referral
I really recommend this class if have trouble picking colours or if just want to explore new ways of using colours. Funny enough Carly Clements is a greeting card designer, who uses exciting and interesting colour mixes in her design.

I have pretty much committed to an idea for this illustration, every time I tried to move away from this I ended up going back to the same image. One thing I do think I will need to be careful of is that the finished design may look more on the arty side than that of a normal card design.

Now I had a final draft in place I could move on to the digital work. I’m doing this digitally as it has been my main medium for over ten years, from starting form a just a mouse with an early coral draw software to today using photoshop and a wacom Cintiq.
I like to draw directly on to “canvas” and try to limit “edits” and not have zillions of layers as I like an element of having almost best you can have a traditional feel digitally so nothing too airbrushed, perfect or over-filtered. Like my style, this is something that still requires work as I’m not where I want to be with my finished pieces yet. So I think it is fine-tuning my methods to get my own digital work just me really!

(Below) I tried different compositions just to test if any feel more right.

In part 3 I will be doing a walk through the basics of my digital art progress.

References and research
My Pinterest mood board for this assignment – https://www.pinterest.co.uk/clemmiee/oca-emmas-study-board-and-collections/mood-board-say-hello/
Loish art station – https://www.artstation.com/loish
Guweiz Art station – https://www.artstation.com/guweiz
Carly Clements – https://www.carlyclements.com/