Meet the Artist Tag

“Meet The Artist” tag from @Sketch_Dailies topic on Twitter. A little something to show that I'm still alive and working.

I used Kyle T. Webster’s digital brushes for all the Photoshop drawing and some experimentation with the Gradient tool to do the rest.

Portrait without text

Process gif!

If you'd like to see more frequent art updates, please "like" my Facebook page, and if you'd like to see miscellaneous snippets of my daily life, then please follow me on Instagram.

Have a great Tuesday guys!

Justice - Industry Versus the Environment

Hello, hello!

Today I'm posting about a recent illustration I've made for a gallery show.

It was created for the Ostara Tarot: A Celebration of Tarot show which is on at The Fall Tattooing and Artist's Gallery from March 20th to April 18th. This show celebrates the launch of the new Ostara Tarot deck (which I designed for and blogged about earlier), and also includes original artworks by 22 participating artists. 

Each of the participating artists was asked to pick a Major Arcana card and to embody the essence of the card in their art piece. 

I chose Justice and drew my inspiration from my personal concern for the environment, which has as of late, particularly locally, been threatened by pipeline projects, mining spills, chemical fires, and other man made injustices.

Amidst all such avoidable disasters - where is the respect for the earth that provides us with air, water, and diverse nature to explore and enjoy? These are all finite things unless they are protected.

In the case of Justice: Industry Versus the Environment - what is the verdict? Which way do the scales tip? Which way should they tip?

I hope that all those who read this give this some thought and what part they play in the matter.


Below, is my usual illustration process break down, for those interested.

1. Compositional sketch - somewhat roughly penciling in where I wished the all the elements to go.

Sketch

2. Inking - After doing a basic outline with ink and doing some shading work with crosshatching techniques and such, I realized that I've made some silly mistakes and would need to start over. You see, I definitely went overboard with certain details, which the excess of would prove to be distracting. I'm talking about the decoration of the scales. Truly unnecessary. Also, the birds flying up from the mountainous island risked being mistaken for insects, or something else which I did not intend.

First inking attempt. When in doubt - restart.

3. Inking (Take 2) - I returned to my sketchbook and experimented with a few ideas, finally deciding to substitute the birds for some clouds.

Second inking - that's better, provided nothing else goes horribly wrong.

4. Shading - I used a number of methods to reach a desired look, including cross-hatching, stippling, and white gouache intervention.

Shading in-progress. Look- some birds have been added!

5. The Midas Touch - After finishing with the black and white shading with my pen and ink, I decided to add a touch of gold to the piece. It would both be a nice way of making the chains on the scales pop against the grey-scale scene and of making a symbolic suggestion. 

Finished piece

Some close ups. (Click to view larger)

Before framing the piece, I took a few quick shots with my phone to show the glistening of the gold.

6. Framing - and now, the illustration looks somewhat like this, but with a mat.

I hope to come back soon to the gallery and take some nice photos of my piece on the wall, as well as the works of my colleagues.

Image size: approximately 4.5 x 6.5 inches
Media: micron pens + gouache + gold coloured acrylic paint on paper for mixed media.

Thanks for reading and looking!
Prints are now available at my Society6 shop. Proceeds will be donated to environmentalist groups, like the Dogwood Initiative and the David Suzuki Foundation.

Sneak Peeks at Patterned Persons

Hello fellow visitors!

Sorry I didn't post anything last week, BUT today I am happy to announce that I've officially wrapped up my share of the work for that secretive,collaborative project I've been mentioning. The results of all the effort will be slowly revealed shortly - with some full images making their appearances in March.

In the meantime, here are some sneak peeks of the characters' design processes and more finalized versions:

A mix of pencil sketches, inked drawings, and finished pieces - all cropped closely for this collage.

Prior to starting on my paintings, I created portraits of all the characters from the story. This step helped me to better contemplate each of their personalities, which were then easier to translate into their "in-scene" presences. And yes, they all wear patterned attire (in the end), because I couldn't resist, and more importantly it's part of the traditional Japanese clothing aesthetic.  

Most of these portraits are quite small (4 x 5.25") and I'm considering putting up some originals for sale. I'll return to this thought later and keep you updated. :)

Thanks for visiting!

P.S. - if you don't already, please follow my art on my Facebook page for more frequent updates: Mariya Olshevska Illustration.

Wordy Wednesday - My Typographic Trials

Hi! Before you do anything else:

Now you may read at your leisure.

So, this past month of so I've taken more of an interest in experimenting with some illustrating text, hand-drawn typography, popular sayings and so forth.

Once I've worked digitally, using existing fonts and my textures to make a fun, quirky poster: "Keep Calm and Pattern On".

Another time, I enjoyed working mostly traditional - like when I entered Moo.com's calligraphy competition with my "Stop and Smell the Roses" piece.

Afterwards I decided to digitize it by cleaning up the scan in Photoshop and working with the Live Trace and Smooth tools in Illustrator:

black + white + red version

black + white + pink version

That's usually my preferred way of digitizing my letter line-work. If I neatly ink my letters the process of smoothing out any jaggedness from the live trace goes pretty fast. That's also how I completed my "Merci" piece:

Simpler version

At first I just concentrated on getting the letters into the shapes that I liked. Once I was happy with the letters, I scanned the image in, and printed it out. I then sketched over that in pencil the floral details. Then with the help of my light table (Also known as my window...I don't actually own a light table) I traced the sketched over image on to my good piece of paper. I did this extra step because I wanted a pretty original to keep. So...then I scanned that back into my computer and vectorized it.

I was quite happy with this "Merci" piece. I was going for an Art Nouveau feel and I think it came out to be a nice nod to that.

Looking back at "Stop and Smell the Roses" I thought it would be nice to turn that into a little series that would encourage me to work on my typography more, and so I went ahead and began to work on "Stop & Smell the Coffee". This piece didn't go as smoothly as the other one at all.

For some reason I thought I could wing it without doing any compositional sketches and instead just sketching it out a few times on to my good piece of paper...yeah, not the best plan. I ended up with this:

It had some good ideas, but the layout turned out to be awkward. At first I thought I could just fix the layout issue digitally by just nudging things around, but it wasn't as simple as that.

attempt #1

Then I thought I'd just move the top part down. A bit better, but definitely didn't feel right.

attempt #2

In turn, I decided to go back to the drawing board. I liked the "coffee" lettering so decided to draw the other letters with those kind of proportions. And then, after a whole bunch of fiddling I felt better. I was more calculated and methodical with this piece - vectorizing the letters using the precision producing Pen tool, as well as aligning and proportioning things in Illustrator. Finally, I also made some coffee stain textures (which I'll be sharing this Friday) and finished the piece off.

Currently I'm enjoying focusing on the lettering and adding a more illustrative touches, like a simple roses and coffee beans here and there. I'll save my detail-crazy tendencies for other things =)

Thanks for stopping by!

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