Elvish Trees

Hello again,

Tonight, I am pleased to share with you my latest personal project - "Elvish Trees", in which I was inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth Elf culture. For stylistic reference I looked at the illustrations in The Lord of The Rings novels but created my own original designs which I could imagine to be on things like banners of the different elvish families.

I started out, as usual, with pencil sketches.

Then, I finessed each sketch in Adobe Illustrator and established my colour palettes. After which, I brought the rendered trees into Photoshop to add some texture effects.

Alda
“Alda”, in Quenya meaning "tree"

Ornë Ornë in Quenya meaning 'slender tree'

Lûth Galadh
“Lûth Galadh”, in Sindarin meaning "Spell-Tree"

Prints can be found on my Society6 and RedBubble shops. More merchandise will be made available in the following weeks. 

That's it for now. :)

Ostara Tarot Card Designs

Hello and Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great holiday. I had a pretty busy one. But it was a good kind of busy, so it was a pleasant time.

One of the projects I was working on was for a Ostara Tarot, which is collective of lovely illustrator ladies from Vancouver who are making their very own tarot card deck. They will also be having an art show, where there deck will be launched, in late March.

What they hired me to do, was come up with some designs to go on the back of the cards. I was given a generous amount of freedom with my designs, so I was very excited to get started. My inspiration came from Norse and Celtic knot-work, and the word "Ostara" itself, which is one of the names applied to the celebration of the spring equinox. For the most part, I chose colours and shapes which alluded to the blossoming of flowers and to the hues prominent during dawn and dusk.

I chose to render my designs in Adobe Illustrator because I wanted to learn how to better create knot-work art with vector shapes. Also, I wished to achieve perfect symmetry because I thought it important that the backs of the cards do not prematurely reveal that the face card may be upside down - a variable some tarot readers an important part of their fortune telling.

As always I started a handful of thumbnail sketches, which I'm not showing because they ended up scattering all over my notebook and became to troublesome to scan.

Then, I picked out some of my favourite ideas and drew them a bit bigger.

Then, one by one, I worked on each idea in Illustrator, with some coming along quicker than others. Design A was the fastest out of them all to come to completion.

Design A

Design B, which is actually the last sketch in that picture, took the longest, and was the last to be finished. After working on it and feeling dissatisfied, I decided to temporarily move on to the next idea.

Design B Works-In-Progress: Initially, I liked the shimmering light idea for the background, but just quite wasn't happy with the look 

Design B WIPs: many new thumbnails and experiments later, I ended up with a much more different look, but one that was more harmonious with the other two designs.

Design B: Finished (Or is it? Dun...dun...dun)

Design C might look most laborious in regards with intertwining the knots (which is more tedious to do digitally in Illustrator, than transitionally with paint), but it came together fairly quickly after I was satisfied with the colour scheme.

Design C

And here are all three illustrations together. They've been cropped to how the cards will be trimmed, and I've given them a subtle paper texture (in Photoshop).

Here are some close up shots.

(click to enlarge)

And that's it for the art, for now anyway. There may be some subtle changes in the future, but today I feel like these pieces are finished. Which design is your favourite and you think would look best on a tarot deck? Please let me know in the comments! :)

*Edit - decks are now being printed, and you can pre-order one right here at the Ostara Tarot Shop.

P.S. - If you're interested in learning how to create knot-work in illustrator too. Here are some of the tutorials that helped me:

"Three Ways to Create Celtic Knots in Illustrator" - by Iaroslav Lazunov via Tutsplus
"Drawing celtic knotwork 1" + "Drawing celtic knotwork 2" by Greg Kulz

I feel like I should write a tutorial on subject myself because I've picked up a few tricks throughout the process. Hopefully I'll make it happen sometime!

Hope you enjoyed this first blog post of 2015. Happy January!

 

Mail Me Art 4: Open All Hours - Celestial Convergence

Hi there!

Today, I'll be sharing with you a small piece I created for Darren Di Lieto's Mail Me Art: Open All Hours show/book. 

Last year I had taken part in Mail Me Art: Short & Sweet and I was quite excited to get to work on my piece for the 4th installment of this mail art exhibition project. I had several ideas rolling around in my brain for what I might want to illustrate, but in the end something convinced me to integrate a part of the book project I'm working on right now into this piece.

You see, recently I've been working on creating characters, scenes, props, and much more based on Norwegian folktales and Norse artwork. I was really enjoying the research but I've become a little stuck in the sketching stage - not feeling quite satisfied with what I've been producing to take things into the painting stage. What I did feel confident about was designing patterns and decorative motifs, so I decided to choose one and bring it to completion. Luckily, my MMA4 submission was still untouched, so I decided to use it as an additional incentive to push out some finished work I could share. The theme was "Open All Hours" so I chose to go with a sun and moon motif, to connect to the concept of continuity I inferred from the theme.

And here's what I ended up creating:

I've fancily called it "Celestial Convergence".

 

Approximate dimensions: 6 x 6 inches (14.8 x 14.8cm)

Media: Gouache + ink pen + gold acrylic paint

And here's how it all came together:

1. I started with a pencil doodle in my sketchbook

2. Then I turned my ideas into vector shapes and lines in Adobe Illustrator. (This was the final line-work after many experiments with scaling of the different elements)

3. Played around with potential colour schemes. I knew I wanted gold and silver like colours for the design and I fiddled with the hues till I felt they were 'right' and would look good against numerous background colours.

4. After choosing to work with a dark blue background for this project, I properly knotted my foreground lines.

5. Then knotted my background lines into the foreground ones and applied some watercolour paper texture over everything to give the piece a more traditional look.

And this is approximately what I planned to paint on the paper that was provided to all the Mail Me Art 4 artists. The only changes I had planned to make was to add an additional outline in black around all line elements and perhaps add some subtle shading for more volume and depth in the background. 

But that wasn't going to happen apparently.

After I inked my piece of paper I took out my colour inks and mixed my first colour. The paper looked nice and thick, like the paper I usually used, and since there was no extra test paper provided I was really hoping everything would be fine. Nope, no such luck. When I applied my ink it became blotchy and I realized I'd have to re-strategize.

After some deliberation, I decided to rethink my colour palette a bit and leave the background white.

Something along the lines of this, except I would make my painted version have a golden and silver shine or shimmer.

I pulled out my gouache paints and painted the base colours.

Then I used my 0.05 micron pen and added some stippling in black around the outside of the elements.

To finish off, I decided to use some gold acrylic paint to go over top of the darker yellow gouache and add some stippling on the sun. I also used some white paint to do a little stippling over the lavender-grey areas. I decided to not use silver paint because my brain at the moment was shouting "less is more!".

Side by side comparison of the two resulting images.

In the end, I was pretty content with the piece and enjoyed it's more delicate and detailed look. The scanner doesn't really do it justice because it can neither show the sheen of the gold as the light hits it, nor the chameleon quality the gouache has. Depending on the light, it can go from appearing light grey, to slightly lavender-grey, to a more saturated lavender. Here are some photos to show you what I mean:

Oooh, shiny!

And here's one more shot of this mail art piece being sent off. 

 

In the silliness of holding my umbrella, whilst also holding the painting and trying to take a photo, I didn't realize that I was on the verge of pushing it through a crack, rather than the proper slot. A slot which I needed more hands than I had to hold open and photo-document the process. Alas...

Hopefully it'll make it to its destination without damage. =) To find out more about Mail Me Art please check out the Mail Me Art website.

Be well my friends!

***Nov 7th Update: I'm happy to report that my mail art piece made it to its destination. Unfortunately, for some reason the mail service decided to print that bar code on the front, However, it now forever carries the processing date. At least it didn't get lost! Check out the other arrived mail art works here!

Exploring the Vikings (part 3)

Finally I am posting the 3rd illustration out of my Viking Illustration project trio.
This is meant to be the scene with the Well of Urd. In short: "The well of Urd is the well of life. It lies by the one root of Yggdrasil that is in Asgard. It got its name from Urd, who is one of the three Norns sitting in a beautiful hall by Yggdrasil, spinning the threads of destiny.

The Norns are the three fates who decide the peoples' and the gods' destinies. They also keep the ash tree Yggdrasil healthy with holy water from the well. Every day they pour water from Urd's well over the World tree to keep the branches fresh."




Illustration info:

Paper: Strathmore Bristol smooth 9x12 (image 7x 10'')
Colour: Koh-i-Noor colored inks + Daler Rowlney white gouache + Rapidograph (6x0/13)
Time:  Uncalculated, but a long time.

Process:

line work

at 95% completeness

detail

detail

detail

All 3 pieces together:

Exploring the Vikings (part one)

One of the latest illustration projects is to research about a culture and create three iconographic illustrations on it. I chose the Vikings:)

Here is the first illustration which I've been slaving over for a LONG time. It's the Yggdrasil tree, but I focused more on the animals in this piece rather than all the realms.


Here's a quick online excerpt of the myth: 

"In the Norse mythology birds of prey are found in the ash tree Yggdrasil, whose branches spreads over all the world. In the top of the tree live a wise eagle. Between its eyes sits the hawk Vedrfolner. At the roots lie the snake Nidhug, gnawing at the roots. The squirrel Ratatosk run up and down the trunk, bringing gossip between the eagle and the snake. The ravens Húgin (Thought) and Munin (Memory) are servants and companions of Ódinn--the chief god of the Norse mythology--whose domain includes knowledge, wisdom and poetry. Their mission is to fly around the world and report what they see to their master.

Paper: Strathmore Bristol smooth 9x12 (image 7x 10'') | Koh-i-Noor colored inks + Daler Rowlney white gouache | Rapidograph (6x0/13) |

Initial line-work:

And some close ups:

Hopefully the remaining 2 images of the series will be finished promptly:)