Visual distortion

I made a couple of quick sketches of one of my cats... meet emmy aka loulou..

Not my finest...how about..

still not great, and I managed to cut off her crowning glory, her tail. In my defence the photo was a bit iffy.
I now set about recreating the image in 5 lines..

...and an effort on the iPad..

although the remit is quite flexible, I could in effect draw an outline with one line.. it is interesting to see whether you can capture the essence of the cats character etc using 5 quickly drawn lines.
Now to think about the surreal montage version of the image. On the face of it a random selection of images taken from a few pages in a single magazine could render a sufficiently surreal image.

The best that can be said, is that it has the shape of the original sketch and definitely bends reality, but it is random and looks it.
Reappraisal time...
Thinking along the lines of a fur replacement texture and having included some rock formations already, I expanded on this theme for my next go..

A water fall seemed an obvious alternative to the area of white fur under the chin.
Searching for more inspiration. A picture in a magazine gave me the idea of using hair as fur; not a great leap of imagination I admit.
Searching through newspapers and supplements for a range of colour hair and useable images; I spied a picture of Liza Minnelli in Caberet. I decided I could use at least her eyes, nose and possibly lips.

This worked well with a piece of hair I had already selected for the crown of the head and ears. I also found a picture of a shoulder and back that had the shape of the cats back. A pair of crossed arms took my eye and with the addition of a wrist watch make a good front legs and paws. I experimented with the facial elements covering and uncovering, framing with the surrounding bits.
Already thinking about the end piece in respect of any possible narative. I had an idea for the Owl and the pussy cat divorce. I could see my surreal cat creature surrounded by feathers with a green boat somewhere. Looking for images of feathers I came across an illustrated article about Tawny owls.

I couldn't resist the face on one of the included photographs and decided to modify my montage by changing an eye for the owls and use the breast feathers for the cats chest. I had already added the back leg, I liked the added dimension but I ended up removing the foot whilst contemplating siting the final image in a boat.

My montage now looked like this. It was put through a filter in the Aviary App to make the colouration more uniform. I then prepared my first sketch of the montage.

My final sketch refined and edited with extra elements added.

I made the cat more feline looking around the mouth and added whiskers. I lost the visible part of the arm that was shown as part of the back. As the creature had become part owl she is the owl and the pussy cat. The quill was originally intended to be from the owl and be used to write the divorce document. I kept these to create the narative, although I am not sure what it is now.

Exercise - A Children's Book Cover

Animals from around the World
Browsing the web, there are plenty of examples of exotic animals placed 'around' images of the world in different styles.
It has to be said that it is difficult, on the face of it, not to be drawn to the words around and world.

I had an idea that a selection of animals with distinctive tails sitting around a globe might represent a twist to the standard form. kind of like ......

moving right along. I need something to grab the attention of children, fluffy, big eyes. One of my first advanced sketch ideas...sorry! animals around a circular shape.

I mistakenly thought that any way round would do. Perhaps i'm going round in circles. As luck would have it the sketch contained... a fluffy big eyed bird.
My second idea is a classic tall and thin to short and rotund group of animal silhouettes

More of my fluffy big eyed bird with buckets of attitude, what child could resist?

about this time I was toying with a new idea
When reconsidering what kind of design content might stimulate a child's interest

I thought about soft toys. There is a shop that I know that has range of exotic animal soft toys. a quick browse on the web and I found a similar shopping site... try out the bones of an idea..
A biro a scrap of paper and a few minutes later and I think that this idea really works the images chosen can also give me some key colour ideas.
I think I will include the world as a balloon either moving rapidly through the scene as it deflates or floating above on a piece of string.
I do believe I have my three designs to create the client visuals from.
however I have been looking at the emu in the circle; I thought that the circle could be a cut out of the world. I tried out the concept to see how much and what sort of pattern the remaining land mass would create.

In doing so my rough reminded me of the pattern of a snake, so my partly obscured globed morphed into a coiled snake.
My approach may seem scatter logical, but I like to walk away from projects at certain points and take a fresh look later, so in the case of this project I can kind of juggle back and forth between each design.


So, where am I now?
I have my three design ideas ready for the client visual treatment. The first two, emu and snake and animal silhouettes I am going to add colour as a layer in Procreate the iPad app and for my toy animal design, I am going to add colour with pencils. this not just to show colouration I am keen that the finished design has the coloured in look.

Book dimensions are to be 210W X 225T and hard back.

Title text in a font like 'papa- bear' see it here: http://www.fontspace.com/bythebutterfly/papa-bear , placed in an arc above the group. Gloss white background.

Text in a font like 'PlanetEarth' http://www.fontspace.com/khryskreations/kbplanetearth arcs beneath the snake ending at the snakes head.

Title text in a font called 'Wood Sticks' see here: http://www.fontspace.com/fontilizer/wood-sticks in an arc above the image.

Museum Posters

OMG - Creativity has stalled!
That's not to say that the tap has run dry more of a kink in the pipe. I am doing stuff and trying stuff out. researching etc, but I am having difficulty collating what I have done and converting what I have learnt into a cohesive designscape and moving on. .

Plan B
I have decided to blog the story so far.

The Museum poster exercise, now, my initial thought was.. I am going to find this interesting, I was still on holiday in France and there were a couple of museums near by. However, having spent some not inconsiderable time on the previous exercise whilst out there, I decided enough, for the time being.
Having returned, a brief precursory look on the internet gave me an idea for an ideal exhibit, Masks!  I was on the British Museum website, seeking inspiration and I ended up in the masks section.
Masks have got legs I thought,Ha ha. Considering the age ranges, I could see no reason why this subject could not be made interesting in a variety of ways to cover all three age ranges.
My approach will be to engage the interest and hopefully inquisitiveness of the three audiences by exploring any link between the cultural and historic background of the exhibits with that of the present day.
My next port of call was to see what was on offer for the various ages, by way of marketing by Museums. Here are a few examples for the lower end of the age range:

http://www.londonchildrensmuseum.ca/

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/young_explorers1.aspx

http://www.thehigginsbedford.org.uk/

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Schools/

My own observations from these and other sites are
Use of bold, mostly primary, colours.
Young children appear fascinated by other children of the same peer group, so images of children of the target age range are popular, particularly when shown participating in an activity.
The design can be quite busy and disorderly- visually stimulating. Of course these observations are based on website design but I think the basic ideas would be true of any design.

I did the same research on designing for teenagers.. A few pointers from inspirationfeed.com

Bright is beautiful
If there’s one thing teens absolutely abhor, it’s boredom. So a cardinal rule in designing for teens is to grab their attention, hold it and keep them engaged. Bright colors like orange, yellow, blue and green tend to work well while grays and blacks typically don’t. A simple, clear and intuitive interface is a must.

Act their age
Make sure you understand your audience. While you don’t want to bore your audience by being too adult, you also don’t want to use graphics, multimedia and language that’s remotely childish. Teens will run from a site with kiddie stuff even faster than sites that cater to mom and dad. Get some input from teens as you build the site and get feedback from users to help keep you on the mark.

Watch your tone
Teens look to the Internet for more than just entertainment and socializing. Whatever the content – style, sports, current events – it’s important to keep the tone casual and easy since an authoritative tone can easily turn teens off.

After a stuttering, thoughtful, but unfortunately non productive period...

Essentially my plan is to concentrate on what I believe is visually engaging to the key audiences, making three quite distinct designs. The link between them would be obviously the subject matter and what ever logo the institution would commonly use.
Some ideas... This brainstorming tackles the pre teens and teenager's versions

Some more ideas for the younger peoples design

The background marks would be the same image of a mask in differing orientations. For the youngest age range, I am investigating the use of face painting and making the connection between an every day children's party pass time and mask exhibits. In the mean time I also had thoughts about a cartoon boy holding a mask of his own face

Back to the face painting idea ..

I think with a little work this design could be workable.
Whilst thinking about the design to appeal to teenagers, I came across an image of a teenage hoody. It is quite striking and I thought straight away that I would like to build something around it. As long as I could capture the expression. It does have a stereotypical element to it, but I think if I handle it in the right way it will play this down.

As I find a lot of the time, looking for some inspiration for one aspect leads to a new angle.

In looking in to aspects of youth culture, I happened to be looking at graffiti, inevitably I came across Banksy and in particular the Gorilla and mask. Which can be seen here; http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/ Banksy/banksy_gorilla_mask _stapleton_road.htm
This gave me an idea to have my hoody teen wearing a similar mask. Giving the figure a slightly enigmatic quality and both concealing and in a sense ridiculing any percieved attitude
Now some thought about context.

Thinking about the adult version I had a look at some posters and adverts for cultural events in weekend supplements to try and get a sense of a sophistication of design. A thumbnail... my ideas are few a subtle and striking combination.. The mask I have chosen is quite striking and works well either complete and at an angle or as I have chosen to do show only half.

Modified and refined..

Playing with some additional ideas..

So where am I now? Re visiting the teenage version. I am keen to use the masked hoody idea but how to present it? The pre teen design is settled but again the composition is not totally defined in my mind. Are other images required? does this image do enough as it stands?

And a rough composition for the teen one..

Moving on to

T believe I have enough now to create a colour version of each of the designs, that is not to say that I won't make further alterations, refinements as I sketch out the designs. I am going to use water colour as the medium I feel relatively confident with it as opposed to other methods. I should just modify that statement my teen design is coloured by importing a scan into procreate and using fill layers.

The piece I have chosen to take to 'finished' poster is the teenage version. After considering all three designs again I decided that the figure of the hoody with the slightly ridiculous ball mask was strong enough to be the core illustration, and perhaps needed no more than some attention grabbing tag line.
Well here is my effort

I chose to do the whole layout by hand. I found a font called Freckle face but hand transposed it on to the design, I am not completely happy that I took enough care over it.
For some inexplicable reason I have found this particular exercise painfully long and laborious.

A tattoo

MuM - Ribbon - Hearts - Doves etc
Seems quite straight forward, form the word mum in ribbon and add some embellishment brainstorm over.

Note to self the 'M's can make good heart shapes

I don't want to leave the impression that research on this exercise is limited.
I did indeed seek out examples of the way that ribbons are represented in tattoo art; mainly online, lots of ankles and calves!
As I was quite set on the idea of mum written in ribbon I gave some thought to tying up the loose ends, so to speak.
When you are not very organised sticky notes are a god send...

Flicking through a supplement, I found some photographs of birds in flight, including an excellent picture of a pair of pigeons.

Not exactly a eureka moment, but certainly one of the shots looked very promising...

I rattled off a quick mock up of how it might look complete with ribbon. The good thing about pigeons in the context of this exercise, is that they look a lot like doves.

I think I can work on something along these lines.

I re-drew the image having added the ends of the ribbon although inadvertently creating 3 ends!?. Having sketched the outline in hard pencil, for what will be the finished piece. I took a look at some tattoo art in an attempt to define a method to adopt for a convincing tattoo style. I chose black fine technical pen.See here for my reference piece.

Initially I dotted the outline with the pen.
Based on the effects in my reference piece, I changed this in favour of a straight forward line.
Then I had to decide on colour. Looking through tattoo examples, it doesn't appear that there is a set style of adding colour in tattooing, it can be partially covered using subtle pale colours to full blown 'blocked in' hues... I favoured some where in between.
My reference piece also gave me the idea of adding some lettering on the ribbon to spell out MUM.

A Menu Card

When searching for fishy inspiration, I caught sight of my car key ring. Its a metal skeletal fish on a chain. I believe I got it as the novelty from some posh Christmas crackers a few years ago. In fact as you can probably see, it is a bottle opener.



Having trawled through, pun intended, google images; skeletal fish images are a bit of a foody cliché. But I feel my subject is just different enough to persevere with, chain and all.
Here are a few early roughs.. very rough!

The top piece was some idle thoughts before I decided on the key ring idea.
I then did a sketch of the keyring on a larger scale, I intended to try a two tone colour scheme.

In two minds as to the best way to apply colour. I decided that if I scanned the sketch and imported it in to the iPad, I could use some of the layering techniques I had discovered in the Procreate app to try out some colour combinations. I favoured a light and dark blue.

Feeling that I had focused too much on the one idea, it had started to niggle me that the skeletal fish was such an obvious idea, I had also started to doubt whether there was enough of an illustration about it. I was starting to considered some possible alternatives. More of which shortly.

colouring the fish logo.. not bad and I like the unfinished look

Trying something different... it looked better in my head.

My first alternative idea.
The idea of a crabs claw came to me after exploring the possibility of enclosing the skeletal fish in a square. I saw that the jaws were reminiscent of a crabs claws so tried out the idea with an ink pen and coloured with watercolour.

But does it say fish restaurant or shellfish restaurant? And does that matter?
I sketched out another idea...

Essentially sardines on a skewer, flames to be represented by vertical bars in flame colours and above the fish grey to represent the smoke.

Originally this was a larger image but looked better cropped. I feel that the bars are too easily confused with seaside accessories to be convincing representation of flames. However I still like the idea behind the design, perhaps try another way to depict the flames...

I also decided to use pastels. My feeling is that it kind of works as a large piece but I am not so certain that it will work scaled down. Looking at the image as a logo I think losing some of the background would make it stronger.

And at the logo size...

And with the addition of a border with the restaurant name..

Does it say posh? Well It can. I tried a couple of different fonts for the menu list and this made a huge difference to how the logo was perceived. The classic 'fancy' fonts tended to indicate bistro. I then looked at the site of a very classy restaurant in London, Le Gavroche. Their sample menus page gave me what, I believe, I was looking for. I also borrowed from the fish part of their Menu Exceptionelle.
Go here to view my exclusive menu.