Tales from an Illustrator: One of My Next Steps.

Hello!

Hmm it seems that I am blogging quite frequently lately haha. But that aside, I have some excting news to tell and some of you may have seen it on Facebook yesterday!

Susanna from Trade Your Talent and I will write a...children book. Well, I will illustrate it haha. I can ramble about it here, but I'd rather have you visit the blog and hopefully you decide to follow our journey over there. The posts on that blog will cover various subjects about finding an app developer, creating character sketches, what we find fun to do, what we find difficult etc. Some posts will be from her alone, some will be mine and some will be combined, like you can see in our first post. Hopefully it will be of interest for people who want to start something for themselves too! To find the blog just click the image below ^_^.

 Meet Migwi the Monkey!! :D

 Everything is still in draft mode, so hopefully seeing it all change and grow will be fun and interesting for you guys!

Writing/illustrating a children's book is one of the steps that I want to complete in my second year as illustrator. I could wait till a project falls in my lap or that I start when I'm signed by an agency...however, I know that sometimes you just have to act pro-active. The story is there, the illustrations are floating around...we are willing to invest our time and energy in this....so why wait?? We believe in our project and to me that's all that matters.

But! Getting signed by an agency is another one of my goals! And in order to create a great promotional package I will join the Zero2Illo challenge '4 Week Promotional Mailer Challenge' I already joined a Zero2illo Challenge in the past, but my thesis took up way too much, so I had to stop after 5 weeks. However now...no more pesky thesis! Not that I have all the time in world though, but this challenge is too interesting to set aside.

Big Thanks to Jonathan and Lea Woodward for giving everyone the change to develop and grow as an artist! *bows*

Till next post everyone and have a fabulous weekend ahead!

Ciao!

Packing up my blog for a while

My lovely readers,

I think you might have noticed a lack of posts for a while now. My apologies! I tried to schedule some time for posting, but I kept postponing it and the drawings I wanted to show you related to the project were bugging me and I didn’t want to post that just yet. For a few weeks now things got a bit hectic and it got to me physically; leaving me very tired. The end of my thesis is in sight and I will focus the upcoming weeks only on this. I need to check this adventure off my list for once and for all!

So my blog will be sleeping for a few weeks, I do hope you guys stop by, read, comment, send an email….I love to hear from you guys and reading your notes makes my day and probably makes me work faster to get back to blogging hehe ^_^. And I will reply to you, maybe not as quick as usually, but a response shall await you!

Before I go, I do have some things to show you. They are related to the 12WC project and one was a commission. Enlarge them for better view!!

First a few Dudettes & Pets. I can't seem to find the sketch I did on them on my laptop...hmm...either way, this is the final version of three small characters. I owe you guys their background story! Do you remember the Dudes & Pets? I will do a similar thing for them too.

A preview of the theme Clogism! This theme came to live during a conversation with ms. Claire and Jenn (do check out their awesome blogs!). A conversation about a 'religion' named Clogism (for the ones who don't know it yet...I live in the Netherlands.). A fun theme haha. I have a more sketches waiting to be inked & colored. It will be a line for cards and shirts. A fun twist to the traditional elements in Holland. Oh don't worry, cheese, windmills & tulips shall be featured on it as well hehe.

The commission I did was for a lovely lady who send me such a fun email with lots of elements to choose from to be featured on a drawing. I tried to combine most of the elements in one drawing and...tadaaa... this is the result:

I hope you liked it and do not worry! I won’t stop doodling, so when I get back to blogging I will have lots to show you. Fun times ahead my friends! For my 12WC challengers, I won’t stop with the project either, I will do things a bit more slow without the pressure of posting things.

Do take care everyone and see you all when I get back!
*waves*
Ciao Xoxo

Zero2illo week 4 & Award time!

Hi there!

I did say in my previous post that I would blog about the Zero2illo projct every 2 weeks and that I would combine the tasks...well this isn't going to happen haha. Part of the task of week 4 was to blog about the two portfolio pieces we had to do this week. I will focus on characters that easily can be transformed into character for books, future greeting card lines, t-shirt designs, mug designs etc. So for this week I sketched two pieces which you can see below.

The Princesses Tea Party! This is a two spread piece and have to say I'm kinda happy with it. Please don't mind the sloppy cut&paste (you can see 'line' in the middle), but photoshop kept crashing on me (I need a Mac!!). This piece took a bit longer than expected to draw it on paper. The thing was, that I didn't know if I should add a landscape behind the girls. I tried it several times and it just got too crowded. So I'm going for a clean, colorful image, that would look lovely framed and in a children room ^_^. As soon as I have this one finished, I'll show you guys. Please enlarge both pieces to see it in more detail.


Character sheet Dudes with pets: With this piece I'm kinda cheating...I already sketched out characters for friends a while back. One is Pirate Kaja with his pet Pirate Penguin. Also Pirate Penguin nemesis Ninja Penguin. The other one is Mr.Unicorn with his pet...unicorn hehe. I do also have a Ninja character to go with the Ninja penguin. I'm going to make a sheet per character (I think I mentioned this before...). I just made a few sketches to capture them on paper and I gave them a quick wash of colors, to see which I liked best.

Feel free to give feedback/tips on the pieces. For my fellow 12WC members: I will try to keep up with all the comments & critiques for the upcoming weeks! I'm also very glad that we get an extra week after three weeks of creating portfolio pieces, because I'm really going to need that to finish up the 6 pieces and coloring them haha.

Now on to the Awards. I'm very honored to say that I received two awards!!

The first one is the Deborah Award. I got this lovely award from Susan. I haven't known Susan for that long. I met her since I started the 12WC project, but I can already tell that she is a wonderful, caring and sweet lady! I'm happy to have met her and it's like the award says: "friendship isn't about who you haven known the longest, but who came and never left your side". Thanks so much Susan *hugs*!
The second award is the Sunshine Award! I got this from ms. Nicollie aka the Stamp Lady (yes the lady for who I created a few stamp designs). Thanks a lot Nicole!!

I will place them on my Awards page! Sorry I won't be passing them out to other blogger friends (again). I'm cramming so much things to do in the little time I have and it would be pretty difficult to choose among the lovely blogs I follow *sigh*. Next 2 pieces I will show you guys are...Honeymoon in Africa and a Character sheet with girls and pets.

Stay tuned & have a lovely weekend everyone!

Fun stuff: Project Zero2illo & some doodles!

Well hello there!

Before I start I want to pass a big (okay now it's belated) Happy Birthday to my friend. I created this lovely doodle for him. Why this image? Well my friend is called Lord Hats and he has lots of sheep...hehe (and no he's not imaginary...in case some of you were wondering that...).

So next thing! Maybe some of you saw a little logo to your left...maybe some of you didn't, that's why I'm writing this post haha! Oh and I have 2 mug designs for you again.

A few weeks ago I came across a tweet, post or ehm...something else. I can't recall, but it was some information about a blog Zero2illo and a 12 week challenge. I got interested and it did cross my mind though, if it was the right decision for me to make.
You know sometimes you want to do something, but you have this annoying voice at the back of your mind telling you "Ehmmm you sure you should eat that?" or "Are you sure...you want to do that?" ....well this annoying voice wasn't there and I only kept thinking that this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. I guess if you really want something you can make it work even though you keep on struggling with time and less energy!

So I wanna say a HUGE thank you to Jonathan and Lea Woodward for creating this awesome challenge! I'm so happy to be part of it! I'll try to blog about it every two weeks and give you lovely readers an update on what I've done and learned so far. I'll give a short update about the first three weeks.

Week one: Here we had to choose a focus point. What do we want to illustrate? Well in short, when I sit back and think about my work, I see the characters I create dancing around in children rooms and books. The characters are part of larger Fantasy world and the colors can be either soft and barely there or they are vibrant. Either way, it's filled with adventure! At the moment, I prefer taking the time and create pieces for books, posters, cards, stationary gifts and freelancing to illustrate paintings for e.g. a children room. So my main focus will be on this, until I know what my next steps are.

Week two: We had to create an business plan! It's a one page plan with our objectives, goals, strategies and measures. Ooh exciting hehe. Well surprisingly I didn't found it a very difficult task. Okay, not that I got the perfect OGSM, not at all, but I have a start and I will perfect it over the weeks to come. To get a glimpse, click the image below ^_^. Tips/Feedback/advice are always welcome. Ooh the doodle I have on it is also a mug design print for another friend. You can see it at the end of the post.

I added motivation words for myself on it.
For me, one word can carry so much strength and can remind you of a simple message.

Week three: Now we have to find 10 publishers/companies/art directors etc, that we want to get in contact with. Also we need to think of 6 pieces to include in our portfolio. Fun stuff! I'm still pondering about it, but I already have a few ideas. I just need to see if it's in tune with the OGSM.

This is in short what I've done so far. I didn't focus on how much I want to earn by the end of 2010 or how many commissions I want to have. Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't know what to expect. I just take it step by step and learn about the lovely world of illustrating as I go along.

As promised!! The 2 mug designs for my friends who had her birthday a while back, but I guess everyone is happy with a belated Birthday gift ^_^.

and

Hope you liked this little update! Oh, are you guys interested in how the designs look on the mug itself? Let me know and I'll put some pictures together for you.

Take care & Till next time.