and a very Harry Potter Birthday to You!

It's my youngest brother's 14th Birthday tomorrow, and per usual, I have to make the birthday card; therefore using a combination of his love for trains - especially steam engines "because they have more character" and Harry Potter (and the fact that as a birthday treat, joint with my other brother's 16th, at the end of the month, we are going to the Harry Potter Studio Tour) this was the final product!

Final Birthday Card

For the  card I have used a combination of raised and flat pieces of card. The base of the card was all flat to the base-card, however, as I built up the image of the train, I chose the main features to make them for 3D. I did this by bending and manipulating the flat pieces of paper.

This is the original sketch of the card design. To make sure that all the separate pieces of the paper fit together and are the correct size, I overlaid the drawing onto the colours papers, and drew over in a biro with quite a pressure. This makes an indented line onto the coloured paper, and it means that you know where to cut, but it also won't leave a pen or pencil line.

As you do pieces which may be overlapped, you draw over the lines, for this is only the design guide.

To help connect the raised pieces to the flat paper, I used various bits of cardboard stuck together to create a variation of heights, in relation to how much the piece of design has been raised.

Final Smoke Box piece

 I cut all the letters and numbers out separately instead of drawing them on, because it went with the overall design of the card. Everything else had been cut out of paper, and therefore it felt only right to use that method for the whole card.

Sneaky Design Tip: With the lantern, to make it yellow, but not a bright yellow colour, I overlaid the yellow paper with three sheets of tracing paper. This therefore destaurated the yellow, but still kept a hint of the colour, so it wasn't just white.

Vulpes

Final Piece

It has just been my friends birthday, and I thought it the perfect opportunity to have a first go at paper cutting, which is a technique I have been admiring for a while now. 

I first created the design in photoshop, and then went ahead on paper.

Sketching out the initial design in Photoshop

Fully cut out frame

Why make a first attempt at something easy? This did take me two days to fully cut out, but my exacto knife was so good. I drew the pattern out onto the paper, and then cut away from the lines so that the detail would be on the paper. I then just turned the patter over, so that the pencil lines would be left underneath.

Piecing together the fox

With various pieces of paper cutting I have been studying, illustrators have used a combination of layering paper simply on top of each other, but also have sections where the paper will be slightly manipulated to create a more 3D effect. I haven't really been able to find any tutorials for this, so I went ahead and played around with a few of the pieces from the forefront of the fox - like the legs and the snout, and then also the features like the ears and tail that would perhaps have more movement in them.

To make sure that I would still able to stick the pieces down, I used a combination of sticky pads used in layering artwork, and layered cardboard pieces, so that they would still have strength onto the base card.

Frame Detail

Mediums used: Drawing tablet in photoshop for the initial sketch. & exacto knife and scissors for the paper cutting.

Wedded Blisses

Hallmark: Wedding Blisses competition entry June 2013

After producing the designs for my friends Wedding invitations, I was very much in the zone, and Hallmark had a wedding card competition on, and thought why not just make a wedding card design that could run slightly with the theme.

I just loved the scrabble lettering idea!

FOOD YO.

What's happened to my drawing...mojo? 

I don't know.

 Imma just blame this humid weather. 

Hannah no likey.

Therefore this is just something i quickly whipped - ha.ha. Y'know...like, whipped cream...'cos it's on the doughnut. ha. ...just you Hannah.  - up this evening.

To be fair, this is productive, because my two summer project sketchbooks, ready for my summer project finally arrived in the post today!

My summer project is all about character design: Design 7 different characters, using the influence and styles of different illustrators and artists, and create at least an A4 of different actions and poses.

I was thinking of ways to gather inspiration for character design, and I was thinking about taking items of food, and rearranging them into fashion, and then influencing things like hair styles, body shapes, and so on!

So this is just the beginning!

Mithrandir

I didn't much fancy drawing myself today so...Gandalf?

Pro-Babysitter

Never underestimate hiding under a piano

12th June 2013 

Last night, I had my first session of babysitting after all my time away from university. It was crazy-mad, but so much fun!
I think I have a pretty different babysitting experience than most people. Normally you watch that persons tv, eat their food, and send the children to bed. Last night I was babysitting 7pm-11pm, and I was up playing with them all night!
The illustration is displaying one of my awesome babysitting skills - squishing myself into hiding places that I really don't fit into, but still end up working!

Removed stool to show the full body

Midnight City

The song that has been constantly on repeat for the past few days, and recently I have really gotten back into using my drawing tablet, so I just fancied messing around with colours!