Ice-Cream + Beer = Collective Arts Brewing - Series 4

Hi friends! I got some exciting news this week - that this little, quirky illustration below will soon appear on beer labels from Collective Arts Brewing, as part of their Series Four craft beer. Thanks so much Collective Arts! :)

Series Four is scheduled to be available to the public by mid-March 2015.
There will also be a Reveal Party at THE GARRISON, 1197 Dundas Street West in Toronto, on February 19, 7:30PM. I probably won't be able to make it, but if you're in the area, you should check it out! More details & RSVP here.

Check out all the other artists of Series Four via {this link}!

"I don't always eat ice-cream, but when I do - I choose my cone carefully."

Additional info:
- This illustration, along with a few of my other pieces, was part of one The Postcard Shows.
- Rendered with micron pen, waterproof inks, and white pencil.
- Prints + etc available on Society6 + RedBubble + DesignByHumans

Update - March 25th, 2014:

Recently, I received my sample bottle in the mail and I took a few photos to share. It looked wonderful in person!

The mini print of "Ice-Cream Cones" in the photos is a postcard print ordered from Moo.com.

Cheers!

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!

Don't forget to check out my:
Society6 shop
Etsy Store

My Patternlicios Etsy Shop

Yes! Finally opened up my Etsy shop, which I've been intending to do for a while.

The happy little box family

It's not exactly reflective of my current illustration and photography work, I suppose, but it expresses my love for patterns and hand-painted objects! So far I have 4 decoratively patterned boxes available and soon there will be patterned canvases, lino-cut prints, art prints, bookmarks and other embellished goodies for sale. Custom designs are also available via requests at my shop.

I'd appreciate if you had a look. Here's the link to {Pattern Pastimes}.
If you have a shop, send me a link back!

Here are some photos of my goodies below. They're perfect for safekeeping jewelry, buttons, feathers, shells, rocks, cards, baby teeth, and anything else you can imagine that fits!

 

Top View

See, perfect for your postcard collection

Top

 

Photos are ©Mariya Olshevska

Here's the shop link again: {Pattern Pastimes}

Have a great weekend!