Graduated!

Hello everyone! Like the title says, I have indeed graduated. I am now a Master in Graphic Design! Though we all know illustration is where my heart is, I'm no good at graphic design haha.

But yes, 4 years are over and done with. And now I'm getting ready for another year where I will go on a teacher course. You know, just to make sure I can have some form of a job in the future, as being a freelance illustrator isn't guaranteed pay. =P

As promised in my last post, here are some pictures of my exhibition space. It's nothing too fancy, but oh well. Better than nothing! You can click the pictures to see a bigger version.

My small corner of the exhibition.

A glass cabinet with a papier maché bear, some linocuts and

my working materials and some sketches.

Some original linoprints on the wall.

A few prints with text, two original prints, my book (top picture)
and a "feelings meter" (bottom picture).

As you can imagine, I'm very happy to have this finished. Though chances are I'll continue the project and improve it, to hopefully get it published at some point (if I can find a publisher that is). But of course I'm hoping to also move on from here, improve on my art, find new techniques etc.

The road ahead is very long and will probably have many difficulties along the way, but I'm excited to walk along it and see where it takes me. =)

The book is finished!

Indeed, the year has ended and my final project is finished. The book is done. I have to say I'm quite happy with the result, even though a lot of things could be improved on. But that's always the case hehe.

Here is a file of my book you can flip through. Sadly the text is in Dutch so all you non-Dutch speakers will just have to come up with your own text heh. =P

Next thing I'll post is some pictures from my exhibition set-up, though for now I hope you enjoy my book. =)

Book test

I just had some fun trying to create a mini version of my book. I simply printed out the pages and glued them all together. It helps me to figure out how many pages I still need. Turns out I still need two more. Plus do the cover and title page and all that.
Days left: 2 and a half. So I better hurry haha.

But it's fun seeing your project almost ready. Here are some pictures for the mini book. Don't look at the crappy quality of it all, it's just a dummy.


Plus here's another lino that I did that I'm quite happy with. Too bad it'll have text going all over it, but oh well, nothing I can do about that heh. Good thing I can still post it here. =)


Once my entire project is done, I will of course post photos of it on here!

The end is in sight

It has been more than a month since my last update on here. That is way too long of course, but I have my reasons. The main reason being my dissertation, which has finally been finished, handed in and defended in front of a jury! I actually think I did pretty well, but I'll have to wait for my grades to find out for sure heh.

The end of this school year is coming closer and closer. I basically have about a week and a half left to finish my project. And at the moment it feels like I am still very far away from getting it done in time. But let's hope that with some late night working I can still get it done!

In the meantime, here are four illustrations from my project. As always, linocuts manually printed in three colours. =)

A circle of friends.

Song of goodbye.

Scream.

Out in the field.

Work in Progress

Received some good news this week: our dissertation has been delayed by about 10 days. Which means I have a bit more time to actually work on some illustrations too. Yay! And to celebrate this, I decided to update my blog with some work progress images. Well only two so far, but it's better than nothing, right?

Right!

I want to share with you the main characters in the book I'm currently trying to make. It's a book about a foster family and a little girl who goes from foster care to this new family. Below are the concept sketches I made of the characters.

From left to right: Bert and Sonja, who work in foster care. And then Merel and her bear Boris.

From left to right: Thomas, Annie and Frank, the foster family.

We've already seen Sonja and Merel in the finished lino I posted a while ago. Hopefully soon I can post some more lino prints here (once I actually get around to making them that is).

For now I have one more to share with you. I'm not sure yet if this is what it will end up looking like in the end product, but I'm pretty sure it will. Unless someone has suggestions for how to make it look better of course. Suggestions are always welcome!

About work and storybirds

It's been a while since I last posted anything on here. I have my reasons though, I really do! Well one reason really, and that reason is: school.
Things have been quite busy with me currently trying to finish my dissertation and maybe doing some illustration stuff along the side. Sadly the illustration part has been a bit neglected lately. But once this dissertation is done I'll move back onto my linocuts! (I have to.)

Here is a small preview of my next print though, for those interested.


Apart from that little message, I would also like to point out a pretty cool site for artists or people who like to create/read short stories. Thanks to my cousin I discovered the site Storybird, a site that lets artists upload their illustrations and lets other users use those to create short stories. There's not really any profit to get from it right now other than some exposure and funny/cute/nice stories to read, but it's a great concept! Here is a story someone made with the art I have uploaded at the moment.

Simply Me! on Storybird

If you would like to visit my gallery on there, you can click on the following image. And of course you can start creating your own stories on there!

By the way, the Flemish illustrator Sebastiaan Van Doninck - who has some wonderful illustrations - has a gallery on there too. Be sure to check out his work if you don't know him yet!

Tests and stress

I keep changing around that lino print I posted in my previous blog entries. Still wasn't happy with the placement of the table in the background; it was partly sitting behind the smoke/smell, which just didn't work well.

So thanks to the wonders of Photoshop and lots of fiddling around, I changed it again. I think this works better, no? Also made the red a bit more orange, so it doesn't come across as being too aggressive. This is aimed at small children after all heh.

Re-reworked image.

I'm also fiddling around with text placement and different fonts, but I'm really no good at this. Contacted a graphic design teacher to hopefully help me, but so far no response. Wish I was good at typography!

Typography test (and failure).

Also have a big presentation about this project tomorrow. So very nervous! Keep your fingers crossed for me please! =P

Lino progress... and non-progress

So I managed to finish my lino prints after working on them all of Sunday night. Only to find out the prints weren't all that great, but I thought I could redo them if needed.

What's worse however, is that now I got told that the background didn't work with the image. I can see why, but I wonder why it wasn't pointed out when I showed my sketch.

The sketch.

The actual lino (touched up a bit in Photoshop).

Few differences between the sketch and lino, but most of it is similar. I lost a bit of my motivation after I heard I'd need to do it all over again, especially as this takes so many hours to make. But I decided that instead of making a new lino, I'd just fiddle around with the scan in Photoshop and see what I could do. This is the result for now.

Reworked image.

Not sure it really works yet. There's less focus on the background now and it doesn't take away as much from the characters, but it still doesn't work I think. Any ideas what I could do to improve it?

Sidenote: these are actually two pages in a book (so a spread), with the left side being kept open for text, as is shown in the sketch.

Late night working

So it is now past 4 am, and I am still awake. Why, you ask? Because I've been busy printing my linocuts. This was going to be my first real try at printing in colour. And boy did I make some mistakes!

First of all, I made the mistake of first printing the black lines and then printing the colour on top of it. Of course that didn't turn out too well. Well the black print itself seemed fine.


Then I had to redo the entire inking process, which is a bit of a pain as I have limited space to work with and have to clean my place again after every colour I print. =(


So I then started over again, deciding to make at least two versions, and doing each colour separately (whereas before I did the grey and red at the same time). Everything went fine up to this point.


But then it was time to print the black on top of the colours... And since I'm doing all of this manually, it's kind of hard to line everything up properly. Resulting in my colours being all over the place, but not where they should be.


The woman now kind of looks like The Joker from Batman. I'm hoping I can fix things a bit once I scan it and put it in Photoshop... if not, I guess I'll have to start all over again.

Let's just hope I learn from my mistakes. =P

And now it's 4:30 am and I'm off to sleep!

Hello!

Welcome to my blog!

If you're wondering what I will post on here, I have to admit that I don't really know yet myself. =P

But I'm thinking I will most likely use this blog to post my art and work progress, sketches I make, ramblings about art and school and all that fun stuff! So if you're interested in my art (or in me haha), keep checking this blog.
I have no idea how often it will be updated, but I'll do my best to keep things interesting. =)

To start things off, here's a snapshot of my current workdesk, where I'm busy cutting out a lino for an illustration. The flowery glove is there so I don't cut my fingers haha.