Kitty's Drawings

Hi all!
If you’ve been reading this wee blog for a while you would know I was nominated for the Lithographic Institute of Aus, Graduate of the Year award. Last night was the dinner for the announcement of the Victorian winner….sooooo…..
No use beating around the bush – I didn’t get tha big prize last night

BUT not all is lost! I got a heap of great contacts…the sales manager for Heidelberg Aus. gave me his business card so I could call him about letterpress parts. My friend’s father who owns a couple of newspapers said he has a bunch of stuff for me down in Franklin which isn’t far from Dover where my press is. He’s got a heap of type and even a man who can teach me to use the press! How convenient! So stoked. Everyone was mighty impressed that I had an interest in such an antiquated form of printing. Keeping the dream alive I hope to be!

Now I just have to get cracking and make some calls!

So who won? There were only two girls nominated out of seven and my friend (who’s father has the newspapers) won it. The same girl I mentioned in my original post about this comp who I hoped that if I didn’t get it, she would. And she did! I’m very happy that a CHICK won it, in such a male dominated industry! She is very deserving too – very accomplished and super motivated.
It was kind of obvious she would get it, being a fifth generation printing family. And little ol’ me always the underdog in a way…I wasn’t going to tell lies about what I want. I don’t want to take over the printing industry – or be some big wig going to lots of meetings. That’s not me at all.
I’d rather do my own little thing, and do it well.

And that’s that! Got home last night and today back straight into work. I got a plaque for my efforts and a cheque for $100 which is wonderful. It’ll pay for the lovely vintage dress I just bought. I should really try and get some photos of my awesome new clothes I’ve bought lately to show you all. Must hassle Jonny!

We’re really really busy at work right now. One of the women has left our end of the office to do more admin work. The other has been sick the past week so despite being two people down, no one minds because it’s been beautifully quiet!

About today’s drawing….This one is an unplanned piece. It started with me trying to draw a picture out of my LittleSnapper inspiration folder (fantastic app by the way!) which wasn’t working in the slightest. So I started again and just drew from the top of my head and this is what came out I’ve been wanting to draw a girl with her eyes shut and chin turned upward for a while and it never really worked. Think it might have been the hair issue – but that dilemma was easily resolved in this drawing. This choice just seemed logical.
This took about 1.5 hours. I made dinner in there somewhere so I’m not sure of the exact time

Until the weekend…ciao!!

Hello!
Another drawing for you all. This one took a bit longer. About 6 hours or more. Lost count. Not sure if I’m 100% happy with it. Seems I get bored of a drawing much too quickly and I lose interest in finishing it. But I struggled through with this one. A little Paris Hilton inspired??? Teehee

Guess I’m still not happy with my drawing skills. Or I haven’t perfected my technique. I think I really need to develop stuff more. More details and a story behind the image. Though I do get over stuff very quickly. It’s always been my downfall – there’s always a new and better idea that I need to get out.
Sometimes it feels like my hands let me down – I can sketch easily on paper but working on the computer can still be frustrating. It’s hard to get the lines right and I’m particularly fussy about lines! Converting them to vector would be the solution but then I find those lines too harsh! Think I really need to experiment more with different techniques.

Whinge whinge. Please excuse me. Just feeling incredibly critical of my own skills. *sigh*

Anyways – what do you think? (I’m not trying to host a pity party here either guys so be critical )

A little close up…

Meh.

More birds! Not ugly ones this time

Today I took the day off. One of my final rostered days off (RDO) before my apprenticeship finishes. That’s right – this time next week I will no longer be an apprentice!! YAY! That’s been almost 5 years in the making – I started at my work in January 2005 at tender age of not quite 21 hehe And now I’m finally finished! Not that that will be the end of my education. I’ve still got my Cert IV to finish and who knows, I might consider a diploma or a degree (part time) to round off my graphics/prepress knowledge.

Anyway – the reason I took the day off was so that I could finally catch up on some drawing! Jonny needs a few things done for his Cult-of-Pop website…I’ve knocked one of those down – click the link to see the Featured Article graphics I did. Just a quick one in Illustrator.
We had breakfast in the cafe downstairs and brainstormed the other art I need to do for him. I sketched a cool looking crow in the process which all of a sudden took precedence and I HAD to draw it properly. Tehehe.
So here he is – a bit plump and round and soft looking. But look at his beady beady eye!!

Details:

Now I’m off to do some of the Cult-of-Pop stuff before Jonny gets narky at me hehehe

Hi Everyone!

Something completely different from me once again!
A few weeks ago I got the CD with my latest schoolwork on it. This year I am going to be doing Certificate IV in Graphics PrePress – its the ‘post apprenticeship’ program which means only a couple more units that need doing. Two of those I am doing at work and the rest (I think three) I will be doing at school. When that will be I don’t know!

The most interesting of the on-the-job projects is the Advanced Typography one. There are two briefs we have to fill. One is a CD cover and the corresponding booklet and the second is this one – A muesli package design. Now this is really my forte I suppose when it comes to graphic design as it’s what I do every day. We don’t print on card but the considerations for food packaging are much the same across the board.

The most important thing is that type has to be legible. A lot of information usually has to be part of the design – things like the Nutritional Information, ingredients, addresses and the various certifications etc. These are often printed quite small and you really have to think about what font you’re going to use. A fail-safe in the food packaging industry is trusty old Helvetica. Many designers I’m sure think it’s boring and unimaginative – but really, nothing compares to Helvetica when you’ve only got a tiny space to fit 10 lines of text in.

Another thing to consider when creating a design for food packaging is colours. With magazine printing, you’re usually going to be able to get away with the standard CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). However, with packaging you are often working with special brand colours that must be very consistent across very large runs. Think of Bega red, Cadbury purple and Woolworths green. The only way to achieve the consistency you need is by using the Pantone Matching System colours (PMS). Plain CMYK can also get muddy and you don’t get such a wide variety of vibrant colours as you can get with the Pantones.
Also, sometimes you need more than just the colours you can see . In my line of work, for those vacuum sealed smoked hams you see in the fridge at the supermarket we need to add two opaque whites and also a clear varnish. It’s a bit easier to print on paper but it’s often you’ll need a varnish for that too.

Now for my design, the brief was to use CMYK plus two Pantone spot colours. I wanted to try something modern and sleek as it’s not something I’m often allowed at work (don’t ask!!!). The fonts I kept simple, using only Adobe Caslon and Neutraface. I’m loving Neutraface at the moment! It’s got a lot more edge than Helvetica, but it’s still easy to read and has a wide variety of styles within the font like small caps and different weights from thin to bold.
I’m no font genius, but I am absolutely obsessed with them! I can spend the majority of ‘design time’ picking a font. Each one has a personality and they all say a different thing. Neutraface is confident, timeless and cool
I chose Adobe Caslon for it’s beautiful ampersand (the ‘&’ symbol) – this was the basis of the design which I built the rest around. It’s also used in the Jasper’s logo.
The photos on the front I took off www.sxc.hu and comped them together in photoshop. I added the shadows and cut them out. Nothing too difficult there. The photo on the back came with the brief and is completely untouched at the moment.

There are still a few things I think that need tweeking. I’ve got to add a few more lines of text in which I’m a bit puzzled about at the moment. And I’m not too sure about the nutritional panel.

What do you think?

Speaking of apprenticeships and school…. I’m officially finished on the 28th of July! Yippee! I will get a proper salary (not that I’m not getting paid nicely already) and all that jazz. Yay!

Soooo it’s been a while hasn’t it? Almost a week. Well – I am in a bit of a creative slump at the moment. I’m currently working on a piece for Art Jumble which is now going to be late. The idea started off fun and now it’s just becoming a chore. Don’t you hate that?

I think I need to loosen things up. Just sketch. Stop diving into projects that take more than a little research to complete. Blah. I’m finding it hard to switch between sketch and colour blocking. I spent HOURS trying to draw a nice line drawing for the Space Girl theme (Art Jumble) and then last night I thought: “Why the hell am I trying to get the line right when I gotta colour it in anyway – just block the colours in you dimwit!”. So I started that today and then its all more MEH cos I can’t be bothered now. Over it. One redeeming feature which I’ve attached below – spent a few more minutes making this a piece on it’s own.

Actually – I kinda like it now. Hehe. The paper effect is very cool don’t you think? On the weekend I had the chance to drop by Mag Nation in the city (LOVE that shop!) and bought myself a copy of The Complete Guide to Digital Painting. It’s full of tutorials on what you can do with Corel Painter. It features mostly photo manipulation in the sense that the base of the paintings is always a photo. They look great so I will have a go at some of the tutes on the disc when I get a chance. One thing I was reminded of is the paper effects you can add at the end. There’s lots of materials like different kinds of canvas and even wood grain.

So I guess in the space of writing this post I went from being very un-enthused and not feeling very creative, to redeeming a crappy piece of art with a cute kitty cat. See – kitties can always save the day!
I feel much better now!

I’ve started on something else. This one is on my home computer – so I have NO excuse to slack off!
Haven’t fully figured out the final outcome but I’m having fun

Well – not much to say today. Better go! Until next time – hopefully I will have something FINISHED to show you

I’ve been tweaking. Endlessly. Feeling like I’m not getting anywhere.

Also resized the pic which meant upscaling. So I’m gonna have to go around cleaning bits up. I cracked the shits cos I wasn’t able to get a decent level of detail in the hands. Still LOTS to do on those. And the hat. I’m having issues with the nose too. Gotta warm up that skin tone again. Argh!

This is all now on Painter 11 which I downloaded a trial version of. Very nice. But a total RAM hog – this file is now 76MB and my MacPro struggles a bit. Though I like to give it a beating with CS4 and Parallels running at the same time.
Don’t think I’ll be purchasing Painter 11 just yet – IX.5 still does a great job so I’ll switch to that when my trial period runs out.

Before:

After:

In other news. I want to start selling. Which means I should have a more cohesive list of things to sell.
I’ve got some ideas but if you guys would like to get your hands on some of my work then tell me which ones you want! And in what format? Printed and framed? Or on canvas??
I’m weighing up the idea of buying a roll of canvas…we have a very nice Epson printer at work and if I bought the material for it then I could do foreigners without feeling guilty. This would restrict sizes as it prints 400mm wide only and with canvas if I was to frame it I would need gaps on the edges. There are other paper options like nice watercolour look and other gorgeous, thick card stocks.

Also still waiting on the letter about my award. Really itching to get some documentation so I have a timeframe for everything. I’m packing it a bit to be honest. Hope the interview is not too soon – I am also heading to Tasmania in two weeks so please not let it be then! God – if it’s before then I will die! Eeeeeeeep!!!

Better go before I work myself into a panic.