Updates and hellos

Hello my dear blog friends,

It's been a while since I last wrote you. And I'm missing you and our Simply Neutrals gatherings! And my stash of yummy fabrics and laces, the needles and threads, the papers and glues, making mixed media books... But alas, no time at the moment... Alsn alas no time yet to have another Simply Neutrals party, I'm really sorry.

At the moment I'm over my head in illustration work (as in work I do for study purposes, not for paid jobs yet unfortunately). I hardly have time or energy left to be social besides family time and the social media side of following an intensive year long online study and trying to set up my illustration business. But I thought you might like to get an update on what's going on here and why I am so silent :)

So here it is.

Recently I worked hard on the children's book part of the year course at Make Art That Sells. This is for a story written by art director Zoë Tucker (she wrote it especially for class) about a pack of wolves and a little girl. The wolves are really naugthy and destroying the forest by their reckless behavior. They also eat way too much and grow bigger and bigger and bigger... And that's where this page spread comes in. I took that sentence a little further and imagined that the wolves were getting so big that they took up all the forest, nay, they become the forest themselves! :)

And here is the cover I created for this story.

There is a whole lot more work I did for this class, but I'll keep it at these two.

These last two years I have learned so much, it's crazy! I love experimenting with all kinds of art supplies and techniques and love to explore the internet, searching for how-tos and style/art inspiration. The MATS classes are not these kind of classes, it's not about learning the drawing and painting skills in itself. It's more about what is needed to improve your art in such a way that it will sell in specific industries where they need illustrations. Like kidlit, home decor, editorial, the gift market, etc.

Here is something I did for an edittorial assignment.

It was the first time I was really experimenting with a more neutral palette and with drawing techniques. Up till then my work was full of colour (every colour under the sun) and I had been working mostly digitally in the months before. I didn't like what I was creating digitally, so I swapped the digital pen for the real stuff and experimented with pastels, pencils, charcoals, crayons, paints, etc.

What I learned these last couple of months is to create so called icons, loose elements, and textures, and combine them in a piece digitally later on. So for example, the elements you see in the picture above (the red pepper, the pepper pieces, the soy bottle, the dish and spoon, I created seperately. And then I use photoshop to create a picture with them.

This is also how I created the work for the children's book class. It's layers and layers of textures and icons that I drew and painted and then created those illustrations with in photoshop. I could create a whole online course with this topic. May be some day I will :)

It's my background in mixed media that helps me work this way. I'm really grateful for all the generous peeps out there that shared their mixed media and art journaling tips and tricks!

Right now I'm busy creating for home decor class and this is how my floor looks...

So these are all loose elements and some textures (but usually I fill a whole page with one texture, created in paints and or pencils or other materials). Not all of these will make it to the work I'm doing for home decor class at the moment. Most of them won't. But I scan all these and grow my library of icons which I can use at a later time.

Oh gosh, I find this such a fascinating topic, I'm really getting inspired to create a class about it! I love teaching these kind of things and get asked in class about my work process... but I don't have time at the moment to create an online class, let alone host it! Aaarrrgghhh :) And I'd also love to create things for art journaling, mixed media, and scrapbooking. Like stamps and other usable goodies. There is seriously not enough time in a day!

Anyway, that was a lot of info for this update. Once I start talking....

I hope all is well with you! I'm really sorry I've been so MIA on your blogs... I really hope I'll be able to do Simply Neutral parties again. I'll keep you updated, once in a while :)

For now, wishing you a happy day and sending you big hugs!

xx Wen