Hello to everyone and anyone stopping by! Happy Friday! Today I played with the gouache cups and drew on more of them to create a larger collection. Here they are!
Hope you like them. I still want to make some plants, so perhaps I'll get around to that tomorrow. :)
Hello, and Happy Thursday! Today I played with gouache and painted some teacups and coffee cups and mugs and so on. Basically, containers with a single handle. Then I added some linework digitally. I want to make a teacup garden, so I'm thinking that I'll work next on adding little plants growing out of the cups... Yes, I think that would be very fun, indeed!
I'll be back tomorrow with some more fun, so have a great Friday and check back tomorrow! :)
So, yesterday I had fun painting and decorating a variety of vases and vessels. Today I played around with photoshop, changing colors and making various adjustments. Here are some of the resulting variations. Click on any image below to page through these variations on a theme. Which do you like best?
Tomorrow I think I will start fresh with something new. I don't yet know what, but it will be fun!
After yesterdays painted portrait, I decided to loosen up and start painting without a plan. The result? This.
I must really love vases and vessels and teapots and footed bowls because those were the shapes I started to paint. I nested them into the negative spaces between the others, and the resulting painting looks like it wants to be a pattern.
I scanned the painting and added rough white linework digitally. This is how it turned out.
This Easter I painted and decorated vessels, not eggs. It was really fun to play and create without a plan. :) I hope you have a great day and I'll be back tomorrow to play and share more art with you. Perhaps I'll even branch out into different color palettes?
For those of you familiar with the show, I probably don't need to explain that I am a big Parks & Recreation fan. For those of you who aren't familiar with the show, the main character in the show, Leslie Knope, creates a holiday the day before Valentine's Day called Galentine's Day. It is a day for ladies to celebrate ladies. I had some fun the past couple days coming up with these Galentine's Day card designs, and I'm giving them to you for free (Creative Commons license information below). Ladies, let's celebrate the ladies in our lives; the poetic, noble land-mermaids that support us through thick and thin! Click on the links below the images to download printable versions! :)
Here is a printable Leslie Knope Galentine's Day card for you!
Here are some printable Waffle Cards for you!
Here are some Waffle Cards that say Happy Galentine's Day on them. :)
So, Ladies! Print and sign and give some love to your lady friends this Friday. And maybe have some waffles, too.
Cheers!
Kirsten
One of the highlights of this past year was illustrating the cover of a book in Icelandic by Ólafur Páll Jónsson. It is a middle-grade/young adult book about his daughter's experience when they lived in Granada, Spain when he was on sabbatical. The title of the book means Treasure Hunt in Granada, and with the cover I tried to evoke a feeling of adventure and mystery, while also showing off the charming style and distinctive mosaic pathways of Granada.
I met with the author and his friend, Einar, for the first time on a particularly blustery and rainy Monday here in Reykjavik. I had taken my umbrella with me, which only shortly after leaving the apartment I realized was a terrible idea. My umbrella, though adorable, could not help shield me from the wind and rain, but it could propel me in any direction like a Mary Poppins gone wrong. I closed it and carried it anyway, not wanting to turn back and be in this weather any longer than I had to. I had no idea what the author looked like, so I wondered how I would find him and how he would find me. We were meeting around lunchtime at the University of Iceland's cafeteria, which as you can imagine is a busy time of day, packed with people, many of whom look like nordic relatives of mine. I found myself a seat at a table, and after only a few moments, a man approached and said, "You must be Kirsten. I'm Ólafur." I was amazed. How did he know? "I saw your umbrella and I knew you couldn't be from Iceland." Ha, ha, ha! Yes, a rookie mistake really helped me stand out.
As we talked about the project, I took notes and got many ideas that I was excited to sketch. Within a couple days, I had send multiple thumbnail concept sketches for cover ideas.
The chosen sketch for the cover design was the first one, though they really liked them all, and the fourth sketch was a close second choice. Those two were also my favorite sketches, and I agreed wholeheartedly with their decision.
<tangent> Different mediums make me create things differently. That sounds like an obvious point, but I mean that the medium dictates how I create, not just what the finished product will look like. And though I like my usual pen and ink with watercolor, I feel that medium makes me tighten up and the final pieces often lose a little bit of the life and character that the loose sketches had. I really like my sketches, and the rough quality and spontaneity in them. Likewise, lately I have found that I feel much freer when I'm working digitally. I can more easily stay loose and make bold marks without fear. This medium is often so true to my sketching esthetic that I am super happy with the perfectly imperfect result. </tangent>
Because I liked the energy and loose quality of the sketch, I decided to do something I had not done before on a project this big. I decided I would use graphite instead of my usual ink to do my linework, and I would color this illustration digitally.
I enlarged the thumbnail sketch and added some more detail.
Then I decided to do some color studies, digitally of course.
Too yellow, and the lettering is too hard to read.
I made the building much whiter, adjusted the lettering some, and tried a different color for the door, and added in text on the fountain and the back cover.
I simplified the lettering again, made the door red again, and tried rearranging the window and sign on the back cover.
Then I created my final "sketch," which would be the drawing I would use as my final linework.
Then I adjusted levels and saturation and started to add color. Here is what the process was like.
Since many of you are unlikely to have a copy of this book in hand, here are some details that I really like. Click on any of the squares below to page through them.
I was thrilled when I got to hold my sample printed copy! Now, if only I could wrap my head around Icelandic! I have considered painstakingly going through this book with a dictionary. I am already a slow reader as it is, so I would hate to think how long that would take me! Well, I hope those who can read it enjoy it.
I hope you enjoyed this look into the process of putting this book cover together. Cheers!
I just decided, on a whim, to enter this week's fabric design contest at Spoonflower, a cool site where artists can upload designs and people can purchase those designs as different types of fabric, wallpaper, or gift wrap! Friends of mine have competed in these weekly competitions before, and I check in now and again and vote for my favorites, too. The topic for this week's competition was Calaveras, the sugar skulls made for the Day of the Dead in Mexico. I spent a few hours coming up with my design, and here it is. I believe voting opens tomorrow and ends on October 29th, so if you want to pop on over and vote for me, that would be swell!
Update: I was in the TOP TEN!!!! Hooray! So my pattern is on the website in the winner's circle, and also my design is now for sale as fabric! Check out my Spoonflower shop! Thanks to everyone who voted for me!!!! :)
I was very excited when I was contacted to do some lettering work for Mapfre Genel Sigorta, an insurance company in Turkey. I worked with Murat Bodur of Modiki on this project, and I am super excited about how it turned out! The phrase I lettered, Emin Ellerdesiniz, means "You are in good hands." Here is one of the posters my lettering was used on for this ad campaign. What other countries can I do lettering for? We'll see...
