AD33 - Making a business card

I started off by sketching out my design for my business card, I knew I wanted it to be square and was also quite keen on having a crazy self portrait so this is what I came up with.

I then went straight in with shapes and stitch lines, this one did not require as much pre planning as some of the lager illustrations, this one was quick and to the point.

Even though the business card would be small I made sure to pay extra attention to the small details, If I can notice them then so will a client.

Here I have thrown in my logo and dropped the opacity down so that I can see how it will sit in the final image, this way I can dedicate shadows and other things to that space before the high res logo goes in.

Just adding in some final touches before I start adding in heavier textures and colour tones.

Here I was planning on adding the ghosting effect that I had mentioned before but it became a little disconnected so I decided against it.
It looked cool for a little while like this though!

And here is the finished image, I threw a texture layer on top of his nose to darken it and I did include some ghosting around his nose. The bow-tie fits in nicely although for this version I did take the text from my logo and add a white texture across it to bring it out from the background as it did blend in a little bit before.

This is the first template I made for my business cards, the interior is completely hand rendered but some lectures argued that it should be a lot simpler because of the busy image on the other side.

I went for something a little more like this and that was a lot better in my opinion, I changed the type face to suit my style a little more and I replaced the phone number with my email address. The final card design has been included in the sketch folder so feel free to have a ganders!

AD33 miscellaneous experiments and doodles

Whilst I was working on the two big projects I did a lot of experimental images, most of them were for fun but some were spur of the moment gifts for people and I am pretty happy with some of the outcomes.

Some of them proved very useful when it came to the bigger illustrations, perhaps one of the textures I used worked well and could be applied to others, or maybe the colour palette I chose would work with another image.

The first is this valentines card I made for my girlfriend, I liked this one because of the ghostly edge I created using the original pencil work. This was one of the first textured images I made in the third year and I liked how gentle it was.

This is perhaps one of my favourite images that I have done this year, it started off as a collection of fish, I started painting them on some graph paper with acrylic, I was just making random shapes for fun and it started looking good so I carried on. I then used a light box to add in some facial features and then it all went into Photoshop for some additional textures and colour tweaking.

This was a digital sketch I created after making the devil screen prints with Tom, we both really enjoyed making those prints and I made this to celebrate a job well done on both of our behalves. This image was then made into a digital print and sold at the Illustration auction where I was lucky enough to be auctioneer. GOING ONCE, GOING TWICE!

Finally I created another card for my girlfriend, this one was for her birthday however, she is quite partial to a cat and enjoys gifts (who doesn't) so I blended the two together for this neon - chalkboard themed birthday card. It is weird because this illustration inspired the cat that is in the Activity book and the colours are essentially the same as the main colours from the book. I would like to do some more neon - chalkboard themed illustrations in the future.

AD33 - The mock book

I knew that for the deadline I wouldn't be able to get a professional printed version so I thought I would make a dummy book just to see it fully completed. After the deadline I could then get the feedback I need and make any minor changes and send it off so I can have a copy for New Designers.
It was so nice to see my book in real life, it looks so convincing and I am really happy with the outcome.

Now since this is a mock the paper quality didn't have to be ultra high quality which did sadly mean that there were some pages that came out a little rough around the edges, for examples sake it doesn't really hinder the piece at all.

I even managed to get some green thread that matches the green in my book for the stitching, it was a nice little touch.

Every illustration seemed to bounce off of the last and the consistency was really fluid throughout the entire book.

I really like this spread, the empty space is just begging to be coloured in!

Another good spread!

These pages came out ever so slightly darker than I originally intended but that will just be a case of lightening the document for the final print.

I did add in page numbers but because of the creep, they slowly get pushed outwards about half way through the book, so that is also something else to consider, I can either nudge them inwards a little more or maybe centre them at the bottom. They are a little unorthodox in the top left and right hand corners.

Invent with Ivan - screen grabs

Whilst making my book there was such a big focus on the content and designing each individual page that I did not really have time to document every page digitally, I took some screen grabs whilst I was working on random pages and I have compiled them together in this blog post. At this point the images are done and I am mocking them up in InDesign.

This is one of my favourite spreads from the book, the art style is really consistent across both of the pages and it just reads nicely.

I was speaking to my lecturer the other day and I mentioned that it was pretty good going with the pace that these images came together. I mean just after Easter I was content with the book being finished, at that point however it was only half the size it is now and it felt a little squashed, I was informed during a crit that this had to be amended. Since then I doubled my page numbers and essentially made another set of illustrations to accompany the existing ones.

The book reads a lot better now that I have extended it, tasks now last between 2 and 4 pages so there is plenty of space to set the scenario and there is also more room for information which makes it slightly more beneficial on the education front.

Amongst a few other things, space was one of my main issues whilst making this book, I designed every page with what I thought was ample space for text but until I had recently extended the book It turned out there wasn't much space at all.

This was a good challenge to overcome however because I had to learn to how shorten my script whilst still keeping it informative as well as be able to manipulate my text so that it fit better into the space.

As I got further towards completing the book I did begin to understand space a lot more. For example above is the back cover for my book, I had designed the custom bar code first and the space required to accommodate it was considered in advance before I started the back cover design. Also I illustrated a large grey box for dialogue, I even left a small little one above it for a mini title.

The answers page was another one that proved a little difficult, originally I had each image within it's respective square set to it's original colours, this all got a little confusing when all four of them were tiled up together. To change this I selected the pink tone that is consistent throughout the book and threw and overlay across all 4 images, this gave me a better canvas to draw the answer circles on to. They are a bit hard to see at this size but at print size they are fully legible.

Adding in that little thank you at the end was a nice feeling because I believe that was the last illustration I added to the book before I packaged the document.

I originally only wanted to get 4-6 spreads mocked up for the summer show, to say that I ended up completing the 32 page book feels incredibly satisfying.

AD33- My creative CV and promotional pack

I went a little bit crazy with my creative CV this year and made a three dimensional circus tent which stands up freely and looks pretty cool too if I do say so myself.

It was a slightly ambitious project but I am glad I saw it through to the end because now I am super happy with it and although this one is a prototype I think it will stand strong as my professional creative CV.

The two 'A' boards either side act as my personal statement holder, I did not have a lot of room for a statement on the inside so I thought I would just create an external part which could feature it. Only one board would come with the CV this photo just shows the front and back of each board, the front has a statement and the back has my contact details, a mini calling card if you will.

And here is one side of my promotional package, these guys are designed to be a double sided concertina print set with the added bonus of perforated fold lines meaning that you will be able to tear each one off as an individual print.

And here is the other side!
All three of my nursery rhyme illustrations nicely framed in an appropriate Victorian themed frame, I also colour watched each panel to compliment the colours within the piece.

Really happy with how these turned out, they look so cool as a completed set, I was worried at first that I wasn't going to get the third one finished and was going to have to hand in just two.

Here is a picture of the whole set, I like the three dimensional element to each thing, it shows that I am enthusiastic about making objects, these would go down well at card companies such as Hallmark and Tiger Print.

AD33 - Building Doctor Foster

This is the third and final nursery rhyme illustration, I am really happy with this one, it might even be my favourite!

The process is very similar to the old lady but there are a few different things that crop up so I will mention them as and when they happen below, but yeah, here is the process for Doctor Foster. 

To start I map out a basic colour swatch so I don't have to colour blind, I had a pretty strong idea about this characters colour scheme before I had even drawn it, I could just visualize these colours. 

Here I am just refining the shapes and making them nice and crisp, it helps that my canvas size is A2, this way my brush sizes can increase and will therefore give me a sharper edge. 

Throwing in background colours and scenery to fill out the image. 

Finalization and adding in shadows and decorative things.

Okay so here is where I make the transition between Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop, and now I am adding a texture layer to the background to enhance it, I wanted to create a dark and murky sky, it is poring down with rain after all.

Here I am adding in a selective texture which will highlight his hair and the church behind him, also the bottom image shows me adding in a heavy texture that will then fit around his jacket. This texture is particular is a little bit special, My mother has finally decided to change the carpet that was on our stairwell for well over 50 years, before she did so I asked If I could borrow a patch of it t scan it. It worked really well! 

Finally I am adding in some light read tints and playing around with the title.

The middle picture shows my first run of the image, I put his name in a textured box and made it slightly opaque although after a short critique with a lecturer I decided to change it to the one below. I prefer this version because the text is really hard to read which I think makes the image's motives a lot more subtle.  

This outcome is my favourite because I think it has a lot of little hidden cameos that suggest his location and the overall colours combined with the selective textures really do it for me.

AD33 - Screen printing the Cat and the Fiddle

This whole process was tedious at first but after a while I became attuned to the techniques. The main reason why I opted for the four colour CMYK option was because I had never done it before and I had always wanted to try it.
Also seeing as this project was based around the study of texture I thought it would be pretty cool to play around with screen prints and get some natural grain effects.

The first time I did a run of screen prints they did not come out as neatly as I had wanted, after consulting Andy we decided that it would be in my best interest to do another run of this image but with a better attention to the small details.

This time Andy showed me how to add in some cardboard edges so that my paper gets held in place whilst I am printing, it also helped me align each page perfectly. This time I also added registration marks so that the alignment would be as close to perfect as it could be.

The image on the far right was one of my first attempts at the image, as you can see is was very washed out and the colours were not true to the original image, my printing technique was pretty rubbish also so that was something that I had to work on. My problem was that I wasn't adding enough pressure when pulling the ink through, that combined with my weaker left side and you could tell how that was going to end.

More the reason for me to keep working at it though.

These ones however came out spot on, after improving my technique and adding in all of the suggested tweaks I managed to pick up the pace by laying 3 of the 4 colours down in one sitting, before it had taken me around 2 days to get it all sorted.


I really love these prints, they turned out pretty good and they are much better than my original attempts. The natural speckling that occurs when pulling the ink through added something really nice to the image.

This project was a big challenge for me but it spilled out such a satisfying reward, I am fairly confident with the screen printing process now and I would definitely like to try my hand at it again and do some more CMYK prints as my artwork translates nicely to this medium.

AD33, Nursery rhyme inspiration

For the nursery rhyme project I wanted the images to be very detailed and textured, naturally through experimentation with other images I started to refine a way of working which seemed to look quite Victorian and I liked it. Whilst I was drawing my characters out for the first nursery design (Hey Diddle Diddle) I was looking at Lane Smith's work quite frequently.

The Stinky Cheeseman is a fantastic book illustrated by Smith and I feel that it really helped to inspire that way that I made these images.

This style is really rustic and I love it, Lane makes a lot of cool effects by mixing washing up liquid in with her painting media and it gives this really nice speckled effect. This was something that I wanted to work on throughout this module, I wanted to spend an afternoon or two just throwing things onto a canvas and making a mess.

Keeping within the same theme I found this awesome version of 'There was an old lady who swallowed a fly' illustrated by Jeremy Holmes, who might I add is really good at what he does!
This made me want to try my hand at photo montage, it seemed to suit the kind of style I was going for and it added that extra creepy edge to it.



Speaking of creepy I also remembered the end credits for the film 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' and how much I loved them. Everything looks like one big stage production and even the characters themselves are portrayed as set props moving to the command of the composer.
I have added in the video link below, please take a moment to watch it, they truly are some of the best end credits I have ever seen!

AD33 - Nursery rhyme illustration - The making of there was an old lady.

For the three nursery themed illustrations I made sure to take a lot of print screens so that I could document the process in full detail. 

It is also weird to see my images stripped back in this way and it was good to see the full transformation as it looks totally different before it makes it's journey into Photoshop. 

Here we go! 

The print screens start at the digital process, for sketches refer back to sketch pages. 

Okay so I start off by throwing the line work into Sketchbook Pro, I then start masking out the rough shapes. For this one I thought it best to establish the outside boarders of the old lady character first so I could fully see the shape that I am working with. 

This is the colour reference doodle I have opened in another window so that I can colour match as I am blocking out the shapes. I find it is in good practise to rough out colours in this way because then I am not going into a busy illustration completely blind. I also manage to recycle this image later on in the process. 

So yeah there are a lot of screen grabs and some sections are self explanatory but I will highlight crucial moments in the process, my brain does tend to jump all over the place when it comes to these busy illustrations. 

Here I am just starting to fill in the characters. 

Again here I am just messing with the colours to make sure everything is working, wasn't too sure about the red inner stomach at this point. 

At this point most of the shapes are finished and I am starting to add in the details such as the legs on my spider character, once the bird went in I felt a lot better about the image as a whole, I was worried that it wasn't going to work but I powered through! 

Now all of the characters are in and I added in decorative details and additional colours. This is the point where the stitch and dot lines start to take shape on my illustrations. 

Brushing in more shadows and adding stitch lines. 

Reviewing previous shapes and lightening parts to make them pop more. 

Okay so the after all of the artwork is shaded and the basic details are added in I then move over to Photoshop for the addition of texture and layer masks, this is my favourite part! 

First I throw and overlay across the entire illustration, I do this to understand the quality and variety of my original colour swatch, it is here that I start tinting my image with darker shades to bring the overall brightness down. 

Once happy with a basic palette I move onto adding textures, to start I throw one across the entire image to see how texture interacts with every element on the page. This part is important because in the past I have made the mistake of just dropping a texture on top of the entire image and it just throws everything off balance, texture should brush up against the artwork and overtake some sections but never dominate the piece. 

Here I am making layer masks and dropping certain textures around specific parts of the characters. The middle screen grab shows the selective texture, the orange areas are the areas that I wanted to target with the effect. 

I really loved this texture I made for the bird, It was made by throwing ink down on some paper and then covering it with cling film, after it dried the film peeled straight off leaving a cracked shiny layer which had a lovely range of opacities. 

At this point I am just finalizing the image and playing around with the opacities of each effect, one of the last things I do is throw another colour layer over the whole image and then add a tint to the entire piece which gives it this ages Victorian look which I think works really well! 

The last thing to go in is the font and the distressed edges, and that's a wrap for that one. 

From start to finish they take me around 2-3 evenings to finish. I think that is a fairly good pace to work at, this skill could prove to be a life saver if a client ever wanted something done with very short notice. 

This is also a skill that I would hope to improve, I want to be faster but I wouldn't want it to hinder the artwork in the process so I must be careful.