Art Process: Fat Unicorn

Hi everyone! I know it's been a while. I was just feeling really uninspired lately and didn't want to force myself into writing a post that then wasn't going to be interesting to read anyway. But today, the inspiration came back! I've been working on some designs and thought it might be fun to give you a look at my usual process. I personally always love to see how other artists work :) 

My ideas usually just come to me randomly. Usually when I'm showering, working out or lying in bed! This idea came to me after lunch, when I for some reason felt like drawing a fat unicorn. Preferably eating a rainbow. Because, WHY NOT!?

Even though I enjoy working digitally lately, I ALWAYS sketch with pencil on paper first. Nothing beats paper and pencil. It allows you to create organic lines and to just be rough and messy until you get the composition right. This sketch actually went quite smoothly and I sketched it all out in about 10 minutes with the help of some pictures of horses lying down.

I'm usually too lazy to hook up my laptop to the scanner, so I take a picture of it with my phone and send it to my computer and import it into illustrator! Then it's just a matter of tracing with the pen tool. First time I did this, about 3 years ago, I was terrible and hated using it. Now it's second nature. Practise makes (almost) perfect!

So this is what it looks like then. A line drawing with a bunch of lines that seem to be out of place. But no worries! This will all be solved when the colouring begins.

For colouring I usually pick a few basic colours that go well together and go from there with different shades etc. These are the colours I picked for this drawing.

Colouring is the most fun to me! It's when it really all starts coming together. I usually leave the background either a light yellow or grey colour and then see what looks best in the end..

The final touches are making the lines a little more fancy, adding detail likes lines in the tail and mane and then picking a background colour + lining it up so it's nice and centered.

And that's pretty much it! I'm quite pleased with how it turned out :) You can find this piece now in my Redbubble store! Hope you enjoyed this little sneak peak into my process!

Newness all around!

Hi guys!
Wow it's certainly been a long time. A little over a year to be exact. I guess I was just not inspired at all and had so many other things going on in my life that blogging on here was just moved to the backburner. I had more fun posting small and quick things on places like instagram or tumblr! But now I feel like I'm ready to get back into it. I miss sharing things like progress pictures of drawings, photo's of little things making me happy or just random pinterest inspiration. I feel like it's my purpose in life to bring some magic and happiness into people's everyday life, and this blog still seems like the perfect place for it!

So I changed my layout for a fresh new start! The banner is temporary until I feel inspired to design one myself. Talking about designing, I thought it would be nice to share some of the things I've been working on lately. Despite the radio silence here I did continue drawing (even got myself a little illustration job here!) and I've been trying to regularly post new designs in my Redbubble store.

There's just something strangely satisfying and exciting when you upload a design on there and immediately see it on all these different products. And of course it's even more exciting when somebody actually buys something! So far I've mainly sold stickers, but also a phone case and kid's shirts and it's so fun to think someone out there is walking around with your design :)

I also got 2 features so far on the website for the two designs below! Even though I mainly draw and design because it makes me happy, it's also a mayor motivation for me to see people appreciating and loving my work. Sometimes you can feel like you're just one illustrator in a sea of tons of other amazing artists. Getting featured definitely put a huge smile on my face and motivated me to keep designing!

I've also been working hard on my online portfolio. Uploading new work, making an easy navigatible website etc. You can check it out in the menu bar up there!

I'm think I'm going to leave it like this for now. Expect more frequent posting. Let's hope I can keep it up this time. Thank you for sticking around :)

xoxo

Illustrations and macarons.

***I've set three goals for myself for the upcoming week(end):
1. Practice with IllustratorThis is really important to me, because even though I got an 8 out of 10 in software class for my Fat Cat package design (what!?), I only master the very basics of everything (and even with those it still takes me hours to make something really simple..). I feel like I keep getting not too awesome grades in illustration class because I don't master the digital part of illustrating at all, no matter how great my ideas might be.

(source)

2. Try macarons!I've been wanting to try them for a while now. They look cute, but I want to know if they taste cute too. Don't know where I'll get them yet, but when I find some, I'll share my tasting experience!

via weheartit.com

3. Finish the two books that have been lying around

Those books being 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' by Haruki Murakami (there are only a couple more chapters left, but for some reason I'm having a hard time finishing it) and 'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman. I doubt I'll be able to finish American Gods though because I'm dying to read another book by Murakami after finishing the wind-up bird!

via weheartit.com

Here is a super inspiring video to end this self motivation post of my favorite artistic duo:

SUPAKITCH & KORALIE "Euphorie" Paris from Raphaël Hache on Vimeo.

xoxo