Songs for lovers and the broken hearted - An illustrated zine - Collaboration project.

A few weeks ago I was selected to take part in a two day workshop lead by Illustrator Tom Hubmann. I didn't really know much about it but our lecturer mentioned that it could end up with us having some things to sell which could help to raise money for New Designers which was great news. Tom was pretty chilled out and really down to earth, we spent the first half an hour just rummaging through his portfolio website and asking him questions, it was especially useful to me as his illustration style intrigued me.

His work was very simplistic and naive, because of this he was more free with his lines and could explore more abstract ideas, this was something that I had wanted to come to grips with and be able to do it at a professional level.

Tom started out by giving us some very quick drawing exercises which involved us drawing each others hands, faces and random objects throughout the room. We then moved on to drawing word combinations that we had picked out of a hat and we got some very strange results, I enjoyed it non the less.

At this point he then briefed us on the actual task, well the first part of it anyway; we were to get into groups of 4-5 and start collaborating together on doodles based around a Valentines day theme. A lot of us drew hearts, arrows, cupids and things with similar stereotypes, Tom encouraged us to try thinking outside of the box and go for some unconventional ideas such as the personification of passion and desire.
He got me onto the idea of fornicating demons and the idea that hell embodies a sort of heat which rises into a lustful sweat, it all got a little strange and my group started drawing perverse things but all of the joking aside Tom actually encouraged it, he just suggested that we handle such subject matter in a more mature way.

After an hour or so of drawing he gave us the actual brief which was to get into teams of two and work on an image that would be inspired by what we had previously achieved and brainstormed in our groups of 5.

Along side the valentines day theme he wanted us to perhaps refine the image even more and have it relate to one of two love related songs that he had chosen. We could use any cover of the chosen song but he wanted them all to match in theme so that we could make them into a zine to sell.
I chose to work with my friend also named Tom and we decided to go for a relaxed approach, we wanted to take something from Tom's book and not worry too much about line quality or neatly colouring things and instead focus on the image and it's meaning.

Tom and I went for a very simple stripped back style, we spent an afternoon just doodling on a large piece of paper armed with only a large red marker each. We made random shapes and then gave them a little character!
After choosing the ones we liked we took them to Photoshop and made them all fit into the square template we were given.

We were pretty happy with our collaboration, so happy in fact that we took it even further and made our design into some screen prints!

We made a load of colour variants including the original red, I was very keen on the green and black outcome and Tom was fairly partial towards the blue ones.
It was nice to see our work all the way through from small task, to drawing, to Photoshop file and then to a screen print.
Tom and I were still not finished as we had to incorporate our design into the finished zine which would also showcase everyone else's images.

After a few days of all of us working together as a team we managed to finish it just in time for an event in Falmouth which Tom mentioned our zines would showcase in as long as they were finished on time.

It was a long day...

But they looked really good once they were printed and wrapped in their red covers! 

Here are a few spreads we had chosen to send off to the book event site as to showcase our product before it went on sale