Packing and more Packing

A few more weeks to go until Dan and I are settled in our new apartment. We'll have a large portion for a studio, a good sized dining room (no more eating while sitting on the floor), an upstairs with a bedroom and a quirky closet, a living room with a glass door; it leads out to a fair sized balcony which overlooks a HUGE backyard with a fire pit...the list goes on! Best part is that it's inexpensive. All inclusive and only $1100 a month.

Until then, we're dealing with the constant haywire of strangers eye-balling our current home. We're hoping for someone to take over for us, but damn it's a pain in the ass cleaning just about every day to show off the place. The landlord lets us know a few hours in advance that someone will be coming to look at our place, I scramble to clean, the people look...and the cycle continues.

As far as packing goes... it's convenient living next to a large appliance store, just today I was digging through their dumpster to look for some jumbo sized boxes :D Bit by bit we're getting outta here!

So on another topic, my friend and I decided to gang up and start a graphic design/illustration/toy business together. By the *end of October we'll have our website up. We're in the midst of coming up with a business name so we can register that title to the Small Business Centre. We're both working on a few projects as I speak:

- Dinosquare toy tag (including the product name and our website)

- Our website

- The first design in our NEW toy series.

- Ordering eyeballs for the toys

- A tag design for LoopClothing

I had planned to make a new website for just myself, but this way it'll be a little cheaper, also stronger with both our voices in the mix.

I'm off to pack some more.

-Heather

*The website will be up depending on how busy we are with the move

Fruit for thought

So a friend of mine requested that I design her next tattoo.

Botanical illustration with watercolour first came to mind when I thought of what she was explaining to me. She told me she wanted something "girly and pretty" with some "realism" in there.

After the strawberry design, I couldn't help but start on some new projects. So I did a few Raspberries...

These were a lot of fun to make, so the next project I thought could be a warmup for a large illustration I'm planning. Here's a little breakdown on the development:

I darkened this a bit in photoshop so you guys can actually see it.

So in that image I'm drawing a basic outline for the layout.

Next the underpainting is applied. This makes all the finishing colours more rich in appearance.

This is when I start to apply the next layer. The greens, and some of the shadows are being formed. It's important to keep the highlights nice and crisp until you know what effect you want. In this case, blueberries have a matte texture to their skin, which means light doesn't bounce off to make them shiny in appearance. In the raspberry and strawberry painting, I had to reserve the whites with masking fluid because they do have a shiny look.

Next I establish the heavier colours and also make some layout decisions (the bottom-most green berry was added to balance the image better). Some of the veins in the leaf take form.

The final layer of colour is applied, some late layout decisions are made (third from the bottom green berry) This is when the blueberries take on their true colour from all those purple tints in the previous stages.

Inking is a little tricky. There was a phrase in Doug Chiang's book "Mechanika - Creating the Art of Science Fiction" that basically explained the process of inking. Carefully choose what you want to ink and leave the rest for the audience to build in their minds. It makes for a more attractive piece of art in the end.

I've still got shit tonnes to learn about watercolour. I wanted to use it for the first time when I saw a friend's work, Oswald Kenneth Schenk. An AWESOME watercolourist/graphic designer. He's dead now...but he was a real character apparently, that's what my mom tells me. He wanted to marry my grandma originally.

anyway, that's all for now

New Website Coming in October!

I just got married, and you know what that means!

NAME CHANGE!!

Yes folks, I'll be going through all my cards and all my accounts and all my addresses changing my name for the next month or two... these new changes are bringing on the awesome opportunity to change my website name and domain.

Here's a little breakdown of my next website page:

Unfortunately this name change stuff is going to be one HELL of a process, but as soon as I get that new birth certificate in the mail I can finally start...hopefully it'll be one more week.

I'll update as soon as I get some stuff on the go.

Holy Hell! Imma gunna be a WIFE!

So it's the end of my life according to this random person I met downtown, because I'm going to be married! Dan and I have been together since April 2004, "and we still act like we met", my friend told the random person.

Honestly...it doesn't feel any different, it's just another step I guess.

I'm a little worried about getting the marriage license because Dan needs to find a second piece of ID before we get it. As for the wedding itself, we have little tiny details to think about, like decorations'n stuff, my mom keeps...well...being a mom (if you know what I mean)

*breath* it should be fine, it's just a wedding it's just a wedding it's just a wedding.

Lots of new things happening!

Well, lets start with art.

The new Tee design will be printed next week! I have a contract to sign and that'll be that for the Perimeter Institute Tee. I'm about half way through the new Tee design, this is to be held a secret until I'm fully finir!

Now let's move on to toys.

I've discovered some useful info from another artisan about legit tags for toys. I am to sign an application for registration as a home hobby/craft operator. This is a specific application in Ontario, anyone who makes/sells stuffed articles should register. It's 20 bucks a year, and that gives you the right (in my case) to create/sell 1-999 stuffed animals in one year. Should you create/sell more, you are to sign a manufacturer application which is a staggering 400 bucks a year! When I've registered I can finally get some contents tags done. I'll follow these guides and visit one of the specialized printers, luckily one of them happens to be down the road from my house!

Before all that happens...

I'd like to sign my name for a small business. I'd like to start doing things properly and I think that'll be a good way to start. It's 60 bucks last I saw (could be more by now), that's to register your legal name only. I'm currently reading the pdf about starting a sole proprietorship and what's involved. It won't be anything big to start but it should be interesting and fun making toys n' stuff all the time!

Hmm what else?

I went to Cuba in February, had a real fun time with a friend of mine and her dad, he goes down every month or so. We stayed in the city of Holguin, did what Cubans do. It was really different and enjoyable. I could really write a whole blog about this alone, so I think I'll do that next!

Here's a greek face for shits and giggles.

-Heather

New tags for DinoSquares!

This morning I wanted to have a bit of fun finding ideas for my new DinoSquare tags. So I spent an hour and a half of my time in Toys "R" Us just looking at toy labels. People were giving me the weirdest looks too! It was fun to look like I was stealing stuff but actually wasn't. >:3

The tag that stood out from everything else was this Hello Kitty tag, it was all pink but had a knock out white Hello Kitty face taking up the whole one side. It was stunning as a tag. It reminded me of some Japanese toy tags I've seen before. So I've decided to base my design off that one. I want my tag to be one solid color with a knockout toothy DinoSquare face and possibly "DinoSquare" written underneath.

Rough Sketch!

There's another part to the tag I need to worry about if I want to start selling these in professional toy stores, that would be the contents tag: What's in it, how it was made, where it was made. As far as I know that's all I'd need...I wouldn't necessarily need a logo tag, but that's would make it look pretty.

This is getting way off the topic, but Dan and I have been casually discussing the fact that I should think about registering my name into the Small Business Association at City Hall... just in case we do come to that decision, I'm leaving my business logo as Heather Russell. I've heard the rumor about registering your name being less of a pain than registering a made up business name.

I'm done.

-H

Alien Transformation!!

I promised it in my last blog, so here it is, a step by step on how I built the newer and more improved "Klyper" alien being.

First I want to admit I was too lazy to imagine a pose so I found a male model on the net and drew the basic skeletal structure of his pose.

I applied Klyper's facial features to this skeletal structure and the basic outline of where his new hair style will be placed.

I then darkened some of those features and added a blue underpainting to start forming his skin.

Starting to fill in features.

Adding a bit more emphasis to his facial features and cleaning up his hair so the outline looks more pleasing. Notice the cast shadows starting to form...

I want to make his skin a little darker, more like the way it looked in my last blog. I copy and paste another body...

...and paste it right on top of the older body. If you are the type of artist that gets nervous of darkening hues, this is a good way to get over those nerves...if you can think of a better way, lemmie know!

Here I add some more skin textures to match the style of the last painting.

He's supposed to be a vampire, so fangs help in that respect.

Final cleaning and texturing.

I fixed the original concept too! :,)

Holy Space Pirate!!

I thought this was a neat commission: an illustration/concept of a humanoid alien space pirate with blue skin, yellow eyes, thick jet black hair, pronged ears, the list goes on. I made a few sketches in the beginning to get the feel of what this guy looked like. When Dan mentioned, hey, that guy looks like Avatar I couldn't help but think of Avatar the whole time. I tried my best to steer clear of that.

Here's my first (hilarious) drawing of "Klyper" the space pirate:

I looked in my old art instruction books for ideas on what pose wanted this hotshot to be standing in, I thought this pose would suffice:

but then I started looking at super hero poses on the web and found this Deadpool dude, he has a much cooler pose:

So unfortunately I don't have a step by step on how I painted "Klyper" but this is how he turned out in the end:

So when my client saw it they were quite happy with it, there are however a few changes to be made to the hair, and I also need a 3/4 view of him smiling with his canines.

I'll post it bit by bit to give an idea on how I painted him next time.

-Heather