The Sacred Hoop - Picture Book

 I finally got to see the finished book so here are a few photographs to give you an idea of the end product, which will be put up for the final show exhibition of my extended diploma course together with the work of 500 other students.
I am not completely satisfied with the job the printing company did and they charged a ridiculous price on top of that, so I am now looking out for online companies which are cheaper and more reliable. If you have any suggestions I'd be very happy to read them! c:
I am still looking very much forward to the opening night of the exhibition at the 23rd of may which also will be the last time for all the people of my course to get together. I think it will be a nice endling of those two years.

 

 

 

You can find the whole book on animexx or bookrix if you're interested in reading it. :)

I watch over you - lines

I started a new painting today. It's so good to work on something fresh after the long bookproject (which still isn't finished but I'm getting there...).
It's for an art trade again - a secret santa kind of thing. All participants had to state their zodiac sign and a personal quality, then each of us got a person's name by mail and now we have to paint something related to the information they had given.
I got 'Sagittarius' and 'shy' - not the most fittig combination I guess.
But it's a good illustrative challenge and I'm going to do it traditionally with water colours.

I stretched the paper for the very first time. I know I should have done this for many previous works but I simply was too lazy I guess.. Anyway, it took me some attempts, because this really is one of the things you have to do completely perfect or it's no use at all. I got there at last and now have a pretty neat surface to work onto. c: Firstly I layed down a soft ochre wash and created some textures with salt; this really gives consistency to a painting.

 I then transferred the sketch I drew earlier onto the textured wash - just the most important lines and with very little pressure.

The last ast and most time consuming step was the inking which I haven't done for quite a while since I mostly work directly into pencil lines lately... But I'm aiming for a Golden Age illustration feel with this, so lines are all important and I actually found great delight in the process. It's really calming.
Now it's all about laying down the coloured washes and I'm really looking forward to that part.

Oh, and tomorrow I'm going to pick up my book from the printing shop... I so hope everything went well this time...

The Sacred Hoop W.I.P. III

 

Okay, last w.i.p. post for this project. c:

It's been some pretty stressful weeks but now all the pages are done and lettered and at the print office already, just waiting to get transformed into an actual book. I'll be collecting it on monday and really can't wait to get my hands onto it.

  

 

 

 

 

The Sacred Hoop - W.I.P. II

The Sacred Hoop - W.I.P.

Some work in progress of the book I'm working on.

live art

I did some live-on-stage-painting yesterday night together with a wonderful friend of mine. There is this lovely pub in town which hosts a stand up poetry event every month and there are always live artists painting on the stage as well. I was a bit scared at first to be honest, for I've never painted in front of an audience nor on such a huge wooden board, but everything went pretty well and we had so much fun going crazy with the paints. It's such a good feeling to work in that scale and not fiddling around on tiny bits of paper like I usually do.
We worked together for the very first time but within 3 hours we managed to create a quite good piece of work I think - perfect teamwork I'd say and would absolutely love to do it again next month.