Kittys Drawings

Hey!

Guess what!

I have a new job!!!!

YAY!

I start at the beginning of September – similar kind of work – still in food packaging…..but now I’ll be out east instead of north….and lots more opportunities in the new place (I hope!). It’s going to be a super fast paced role, servicing a very high profile client in their head office.

So that is what was special about the grey sheath dress in my last post – it was what I wore to my first interview with my new employers.

That’s all I got for you today. I finished a dress – but I’m not taking photos cos today is a bludge day and I can’t be bothered getting dressed up and doing my hair etc when I don’t plan on going out. Heh. I’ve also been drawing…a few crappy sketches. I’m really out of practice with sketching.  Here is one just so I don’t have a words only post.

Till soon guys! I’m off to go figure out THIS pattern – make it smaller, and squish the skirt onto the small amount of fabric I have. I’m going to see if I can use parts of another pattern where its a gored skirt not a full circle. Should still have enough swish and hopefully be more economical on fabric.

Hellooooooo!!!
Lately I’ve had the opportunity to do some illustrations for work. It’s not often that I get to crack out the Wacom but it is getting more frequent as our clients realise we CAN do the fancy pants design and photography without having to pay two lots of people to get their work done. Yay for the customer!!
And Yay for me cos I like being able to potter about drawing while at work.

Today we had a customer that wanted a revamp of their old designs with some illustrations thrown in. I wasn’t sure if they were happy to pay the extra for full colour process plates (cyan, magenta, yellow and black – which in our kind of business costs a lot more than the printers that make magazines etc) so I kept the colours to a minimum. Just one spot colour (Pantone), black, our standard double white (for opacity on the clear bags) and varnish.

First, the illustrations. I found some stock images and redrew them into a pleasing composition. I wanted a sketchy kind of look – all done in Photoshop. Corel Painter 9 packed it in on my work computer too. I think it may have something to do with updating the Wacom tablet drivers for the new operating system so I had to use PS.

Red wine and garlic:

Garlic and herb:

And this is the final result. This is only the first concept for the customer so I’m sure they will change it.

The stripes and colour block reach to the top and bottom of the bag so they will form a band across the meat.

Annnnyways it’s almost dinner time. Hope you have a good weekend peeps and I endeavor to finish this week’s CHOW so I will have that ready on Monday.
Ciao!!

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!!

Please excuse the poor quality photos! This is my complete portfolio – ready for my interview tomorrow. The red is such a nice colour – and I don’t know if you can see the grain of the fabric. Feels nice that

You’ve all seen most of the stuff that’s in there – I don’t particularly like much of my older stuff. And when I put it all together, its only about 14 things I’m really happy with that I’ll be showing. Though it’s all very diverse, which I am not sure if it is a good thing or not but I like to try my hand at lots of things!
There’s the Cult-of-Pop design, my vector kitty, the St Imre stuff, the latest drawing of the blonde girl, some magazine projects I did at school and the 3D renders. And what you can see here is my go at photography! Heh! Well, it’s not very clear. But I took these on a trip to a Yarra Glen classic car show. There were such great shapes and colours! Shiny!

ALSO – I had an idea today. For my next drawing. Which is wonderful when a creative moment strikes. Except I have so many other things to finish off (like that second model drawing which I HAVEN’T forgotten about!)….but the ‘vision’ struck me quite strong and I had to sketch immediately to get the feeling down and the shapes. So now it’s quite firm in my mind and I just have to refine it. I won’t tell you all what it is yet as I’ve got too much of a backlog of other stuff that you need to see the end of. Heh.
Well – til tomorrow, when I will have news of the interview…Ciao!

I’ve had a fairly decent response to these characters – so in order to stroke my ego a little bit, I shall post the final drawing here.

It took me roughly 24 hours total to complete. 3 full working days. I felt privileged to be doing something so luxuriously creative in my very technically focused office! Lol.
A bit I blurred out cos I don’t want to be giving away too much about work. I don’t know if I’m crossing any boundaries here so we’ll see if this stays up. Hmm.

Now I will be able to get back to my other projects. Yay! I have some changes to make on the DareDevil label – which is almost done. Then I gotta source some stickers for printing it. Unfortunately I can’t think of a reasonable way to get them done professionally as we only need a couple of hundred printed. It would be much too costly.

Also, my model drawing has been neglected for quite some time so I should aim to get that back into action next week.

Then there’s SJ’s brand logo which I have narrowed down a little bit. I can post the preliminary drawings for that which are littering my diary. A Moleskin full of kitties!

Get those out of the way and I can think about other ideas. Of which I have maaaaanyyyy. The creative juices are flowing people!

Excuse the file cos its MASSIVE. Eep.

Teeheee – I like this one. It was fun to draw. Character 2 in my caricature drawing. I’ve got til Thursday morning to draw 4 more. To say I’m feeling the pressure is an UNDERSTATEMENT.
Eeep!

(she’s going to be screeching: “It’s fo’ YOOOOUUUU!!!”

And you probably won’t see the finished product for this. Not sure if it’s “right” to put the stuff I do at work up here. Even though it is nothing to do with anything my company is paid for…this is internal stuff…Hmmm. Well no one who reads this will know who this is….which kinda defeats the point of a caricature…but anyway – I just wanted to show I’m not being a slack-ass.

If you’re wondering what he’s holding – its a HAM. Hehee.
You’ll have to make do with the lack of background. Deal