It Flows when you don't Think

More experimenting and trying not to give it too much thought. That's when things just happen.

Inverted

Experimenting with inverting the images on Photoshop. On one of my double spreads I'd considered designing something with fireworks in which case inverting the image would work really well!

However, I don't think it's likely I'll be using this technique for my final book but it's worth remembering in the future. 

Clever Rat

Rat cleverly sat on Ox's back, saved his energy, and won the race in the Chinese New Year.

Pencil Drawings and Hand Writing

Here are some scans of my first concertina book. Slowly getting closer to producing the real thing but of course, there's still a lot more development needed yet. However, the composition is gradually starting to take shape on each page. I've come back to concentrating on the format and font etc in the book as it's just as important as the character development. Here I've simply written the text by hand but I will all attempt it with a font using InDesign. 

Writing

Something else my tutor suggested to me was to use my hand writing for the text. He thought it was quite nice so I thought why not give it a shot!? I personally quite like imagery and fonts which look quite scrappy but neat and rustic so here is literally my story but hand written.

This of course is only something I'm considering, at this stage nothing is definite but it's still definitely worth a try. I'll continue with this for a short while and put it together perhaps in a dummy book or just on a few spreads to get an overall view of what it might look like. 

First attempts on Photoshop

I've been experimenting with photoshop and simply putting the images I already have together. My tutors explained to me to think about the white space or space around the images too because I don't want it to look too overcrowded - especially for the first few attempts. It's taken me a while to get used to it but so far I think it's going well. Annoyingly the only way to get used to these things is by practicing and going wrong, but so far I don't think they're too bad however I would definitely like to continue to make improvements. 

And the other half …

As you may have noticed I only put up half the animals in the Chinese New Year in charcoal so here are the other half, number seven to twelve. I had to include them because of course they've what I've been working on. Next step is to play around in photoshop.

Inks

Along with my drawings in charcoal I've also done a few in plain black ink. The difference with these is that I used a dip pen for a lot of it. Probably one of the most frustrating things to use in the world because I was continuously having to 'dip' the pen back in the ink but I was pleasantly surprised with the results. I've managed to create a range of marks just to see how I could manipulate the ink - I felt I could run with it.

Watercolour patterns and smudges

These are the experiments with water colour which I intend to add under my charcoal and ink drawings. At the moment they don't look like much but I was interested in how I could control and mould the watercolour and also see what 'happy accidents' would come out of it. The next step is putting it together on photoshop, but that's for another day. :)