PS/Watercolor collage

 

I have been playing around trying to learn Photoshop in order to be able to do something about the ugly photos/scans of my drawings and paintings - and I decided to also try to learn to do collages and other fun stuff. This is not the most beautiful work of mine, exactly, but a fun experiment. I have simply taken a little drawing my 5-year-old forced me to do ("draw a baby mermaid for me pleasepleaseplease"), cut it out in PS and placed it on top of a mix of two different watercolor backgrounds. Not so pretty, but a fun technique to learn, which hopefully could come in handy some day....

Second assignment

The second assignment in my course was to illustrate a text that described how the Swedish like to run away from the cold, darkness and depression in winter and how many people have settled down in Thailand, either for short periods or for good... This is my result, I had trouble with scanning, or rather taking a photo this time and trying to fix any mistakes in white balance, exposure etc in Camera Raw (a Photoshop program). This is my favorite method so far, but it is far from perfect... 

Illustration assignment

I am currently taking an online course in illustration, which is very exciting. It is based on assignments that are turned in first to the othter students for commenting and then to the teacher for comments and grades after changes have been made. The first assignment was to illustrate the month of April for a fictive calender printed by the city Malmö, Sweden. As I have been there only once, I had to rely on Google to provide me some inspiration. After trying some different subjects and styles I settled for the above watercolor/ink motive of the bridge between Sweden and Denmark along with some spring flowers and birds. In the background, hardly visible, is the wind farm Lillgrund. I wanted it to be a bigger part of the composition first, but I could not really fit it in. Below are some other ideas I was working on, in a very different style.

This is a famous building in Malmö (Turning Torso) along with some typical spring attributes. It was a quick sketch on paper, which I added some color to and then added the background in Photoshop. I don´t think it turned out so good though - I would have wanted to do something funny with the backhround working with textures, but I am still struggeling to learn the basics of PS. I realised it would have been easier to work with if I hadn´t added the color so I did an experiment....

 

...with the above linedrawing which I scanned and colored in Photoshop. I think one could do something more interesting to background and colors here as well with a bit more PS-skill... For comparison, below is the same drawing, but hand colored. It´s the same one in two versions, to demonstrate another problem that I constantly have: the first one is a photo, which makes it too grey and ugly. The second one is scanned, which makes all the light colors dissapear. Any tips as how to solve either of these problems would make me insanely happy....

 

Some illustrated quotes

I have been working on some illustrated quotes that I wanted to hang in my kitchen for a while. I did some messy backgrounds in mixed media (or, well, I took some messed up scrap papers and did a little watercolor doodling and some prints on them) but I never really got around to writing. Once I took a calligraphy course and since then I am almost terrified to write anything. It was really anti-creative with a lot of instructions on how you really really really had to learn all the abc´s before you could start inventing letters of your own and let your writing free etc etc. So I always worry too much about the letters getting perfect and exact which means, at least in this case, I was too scared to get started. What if one letter got ugly and I had to start over with the background? So, finally, after finding some inspiration in the wonderful blog of We Three I decided to skip the calligraphy pens and just get going with a permanent marker! It is not the most beautiful writing in the world, thats for sure, but I am quite happy with the end result anyway! 

Work in progress...

I have been drawing a bit lately, but haven´t really had the time to post... One thing that I have started is an illustration project for a swim club where a friend of mine works as a coach. I have been doing some sketches for style ideas. They shall work as icons in small sizes and be easy to recognize for the kids, at the same time they want it a bit artistic and with a feeling of watercolour. Well, here are some suggestions for sea stars. I am always happy for suggestions and comments. Which one is your favourite?

EDM 291 - book illustration

EDM 291 - draw an illustration for the cover of your favourite book.

The Shire

Well, this has taken me a while.... Simultaneously as this challenge came out I got as homework for my illustrations course to make a series of illustrations for a book, so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone, and did my all time favourite - the Lord of the rings. This turned out to be harder than I could imagine since there was so much pressure from all those years of reading and imagining, watching the movie, admiring the drawings of Alan Lee... well, you get the idea.

In the spirit of... 2

...Stina Persson. Well, this is the second assignment for my illustration class, to make some illustrations in the spirit of an other illustrator. It was supposed to be illustrations showing our selfs in a situation from our daily life, and I found this quite hard to do in her style, which leaves little room for details. But this is an attempt at showing myself drinking coffee in the style of Stina Persson. I just love her work, it is the kind of painting that inspire me on one hand and make me truly jealous that I didn´t think of it on the other...

In the spirit of.... #1

...Stina Wirsén. Sort of. Ink, collage and coloured pencils on paper.

This is an assignment for a corse that I take in illustration. The assignment is to do three illustrations in the spirit of another illustrator, inspired by some daily activity in your life. This is inspired by Swedish artist Stina Wirsén who make fantastic illustrations for childrens books, fashion magazines, newspapers..... The story in my first example above is me doing yoga to mentally run away from the stressful ordinary life in the city (right side) to some calm "inner place" or something, inspired by nature (left side). The text reads "andas" which means "breathe". I realize I should have turned it around since you usually read from left to right, but hey.... my life is a mess anyway ;)

Numera även illustratör....

Häpp, en av mina gamla illustrationer har dykt upp på en konferenshemsida:

http://www.wrec2011.com/topics.html

De har även bett om lov att få använda den i sitt 2:nd call! Det är egentligen min avhandlingsbild, men den har blivit populär :) På jobbet har jag även bidragit med illustrationer av rätt tveksam kvalité till en årsrapport - hade gjort dem till ett fikaseminarium och de har "spritt sig" - om jag hade vetat det hade jag kanske lagt ner lite mer energi i projektet... Man kanske borde byta bana helt enkelt?

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An old illustration that I made for my PhD Thesis showed up on a conference web page - they also asked for permission to use it in print. At work, I also made some quick sketches for a presentation that evereybody wants to use (mild exaggertion of course). Maybe I should re-think my carrier and become an illustrator?? :)