They show us the state of our decay.
Lovely little write up by the guys at Shape, Manchester!
The other day I set up a little website, Facebook page and Behance and today I got a message on Behance from a Brynn Snow, who had featured my work on the website, D2G Apparel, and it currently has 175 likes, it’s mad to think that that many people have seen my work and appreciate it. http://d2gapparel.com/2012/fashion-illustration-2/fashion-illustration-laura-louisa/ There is also lots of other amazing illustrators work featured so it’s definitely worth a look.
It’s definitely worth putting yourself out there to be found.
This week I have made a website/online portfolio, a Behance, and a Facebook page, as well as applying for an online shop account. Feel pretty proud of myself… you’ve got to put yourself out there I guess.
I’ve been approached by a design company with an opportunity to produce illustrations for them. There has been mention of vector images, so I had a go at using vector magic to transform one of my sketches into a vector image. The result is pretty good, I couldn’t visualise how my drawings would turn out but this has made it possible.
I wanted to do something a little bit more, so I attempted to turn my book into an Ibook however with very little time it didn’t quite turn out as planned but I made my book available in ibooks as a pdf and it works exactly the same so I am pleased. I decided on the name Circles for my book as it was the most popular “favourite shape” as well as the idea that the people I drew had surrounded me for the past 3 years, and within the big circle, us a group, there were other smaller circles of friends. For the ibook I made a very quick cover, for my actual book I want a plain cover with just “Circles” on it but I had a little play for the ibook. Inside the book I didn’t want to mention the shape thing, as although it was my original concept, through my project I came to realise that I didn’t want to turn my subjects into statistics. I had spent time drawing them trying to reveal their individuality and personality, I didn’t want to take that away with my shape concept so I’ve kept the results to myself other than circle was the majority choice.
Designing the book…
With all my illustrations done I decided to collate them all together in a book. I wanted to keep the book simple as not to distract from the illustrations themselves. With some help from the lovely Hannah I set up a A4 facing pages document. I was originally going to paginate my pages myself and made a mock up book to help me realise where to place my images and text but in the end I stuck with the facing pages document, to save myself confusion and time. Having decided where to put each of my images, and with them all cleaned up to a standard I was happy with Tom Lowndes helped me put the layout together. I printed a smaller A5 version out which I pinned together with paperclips just to be able to flick through and be sure that the book flowed. With a few minor tweaks amended I got the a4 pages printed ready for hand-in I decided not to spend on book printing and binding until after marking when I can be sure that there really isn’t any improvements to be made. All in all I am actually really happy with this project, and proud of what I have achieved.
…IT’S A SECRET!!!
After a quick chat with Tash running through random words that I had come up with for the name of my book I have now got a title for it. I actually really like it, it’s so appropriate…. but it’s a secret for now.
Sneaky peek….
I had been having trouble with my scanned in images, I was trying to edit them to make the background appear crisp and white, especially with the images that were a bit crinkly from the amount of water I’d used during production….but yesterday Hannah introduced me to a little bit of magic that Photoshop that I was currently unaware of, but totally solved my problem… a simple little manoeuvre of CMD+L, a little fiddle and then a manoeuvre of CMD+M, a little fiddle and Wah-laaaa! So busy busy editing my images ready to go into my book, with most done, I then enlisted the help of our lovely Hannah again with Indesign and gave me a little tutorial and showed me how to set up my document, as lack of practice had left me clueless…memory…fish.
With all the new know-how and with the layout expertise of Tom Lowndes the layout of the book began. Tash helped to arrange my images in a way that would flow well and then whilst I continued to edit my images ready to be placed, Tom started to put the book together for me, he really does have an eye for what looks good with layouts.
4.45 am, too stressed to sleep… too tired to draw. Whilst I am awake I thought I had better be productive so I took one of the drawings I did yesterday and had a little experiment with photoshop to see what I could come up with. This isn’t something I very often do if at all, usually I just rely on hand drawn methods but I have through my research seen some amazing things illustrators do to their work using digital means so I thought I should probably give it ago myself. If truth be told I didn’t find this the easiest of tasks because it I didn’t really have a vision of what I wanted but I did enjoy building up my image gradually…..and if you make a mistake it’s easy to put right…. easier than traditional drawing/painting anyways.
*apologies if I don’t make sense….it’s late.
