mysterious look-alike

new illustration of the alan bradley book completed. mostly.

to be frank most of the time i didn’t enjoy drawing it even. cause i had a dead line and …well, an obligation to do it. i don’t like to be obliged to draw, you know. and was afraid to screw it up.

but i’m pretty happy with the result i must say.

in a couple of days it’s gonna be a part of our illustration class small annual exibition

 

p.s.  lets play a little trivia game called who’s this mysterious Stephen Fry’s 1930’s (approximately)  look-alike, or maybe more than just a look-alike?…..

if you answer it right – you are very very AWESOME.

until next time

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back from the R Zone

so!  finally got the wax pencils i’ve ordered a while ago and made some further progress on the “dinner” drawing

um…..i have nothing else to say about it by this point….except that loads of work are still ahead of me

p. s.  i went about 3000 km out of my oh-so-very-narrow Comfort Zone for a couple weeks to visit my family.

most of my impressions from the R Zone can be easily described with 4 words  – i don’t get it    …peculiarly large amount of signs in public bathrooms on how to behave, especially the ones that call out to respect each other or the ones that advise you not to become a youtube star…..coffeeshop managers walking about their workspace in sweatpants….  weird.

p.p.s  my cat has a problem

– from time to time he comes home looking like this…   no, it’s not my hand there on the left. yes, the gray parts supposed to be white.  what’s the problem to just you know not bathe in the dirt?!  so there’s been some chasing around the flat and some screaming and he’d promised that he’d never do this again….well maybe just one more time, when you’ve just changed the sheets or something…and my dog is like, oh,it’s all my fault! i shouldn’t  have been stealing his food for so long!

i’m thinking some family counseling may be in order! or at least a cat shrink!

(it looks like the cat is kissing the dog on this pic, which is ironic, um, because he doesn’t really and he won’t)

 

until next time,

me

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safe and comforting….

this is the first illustration for the children book i’m trying to illustrate.

an 11-year old lies in the local cemetery fantasizing about death. nothing weird about that!   🙂

i loved cemeteries when i was a kid, (always went with my dad during the day hours, nothing creepy really) being there felt safe and comforting

i think i’ll be darkening the angel statue and the front gravestone to add some depth it seems to lack….

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half-assed progress in drawing and sewing

well, so far i’ve been struggling a lot with the sketches for the illustrations (or may be i should call it storyboard? not sure whats the correct term is)

pretty much feeling stuck and having no interesting ideas for none of them. but even so, the work progresses, i sit like for 40 min with my head between my hands almost not moving at all, and then i come up with something not too terrible after all.

my illustration teacher watches me like this and she goes “just start drawing you know it”ll come to you…”

and i go “you know it doesn’t work that way for me, Yana, i cant draw if i don’t know what to draw”

and she nods and goes “yeah….”

i filled half a sketchbook with unreadable doodles, tried different mediums (picture above) and escaped to sewing a couple of times (pic. below)

about the tilda doll it’s kind of a weird story

my mother called me. we live in different countries so we don’t call each other a lot. we skype. and asked me to make her a tilda doll (which i’ve never done before)

a tilda doll, mum, really? well ok i’m on it then….
so naturally i’ve put aside all my other chores and set to work.

the outcome is not perfect especially regarding the cellulitis legs but hey….

i have nothing witty to end the sentence with actually…should i write yolo? no, somehow it feels not too smart, so i won’t

i filled it with old pillow case filling and it got a little lumpy. all the materials recycled

and about the fabric scraps blanket- i was basicly looking for a project which will help to utilise as much fabric scraps i”ve gathered over the years as possible. i don’t wanna be a hoarder ,you know

p.s. on a random note, watched “away we go”. i think it’s one of the best of it’s genre, great acting, and the best part is that the main characters didn’t get married in the end. so thanks, dave eggers and vendela vida for a slice of an uncheesiness it this cheesy cheesy world.

(too melodramatic? can’t help it ,sorry)

p.p.s.  i got Jim Jarmusch in recommended tags.  why him? why not i don’t know…..david lynch? hmm….

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first illustration progress

i’m half way through it i think

it was terribly hard to choose the right color sceme

the photo looks whitish at some places cause it’s acrylic- reflects light

but no worries – it’ll be mostly covered by wax pastel and mattifying spray

as a matter of fact i only chose acrylic for the underpainting cause the colors looked more vivid as opposed to gouache. somehow when i started of with gouache the colors all came terribly dull and ,well, wrong.

but! now that i’ve proceded to the next stage and introduced wax pastels on top of acrylic, i’m not all that happy with the collaboration: matte on top of glossy looks weird

i’ve came up with some more reasons but it’s a bit of a headache to translate them to english

so.. next painting : back to gouache again or maybe a mixture of acrylic and gouache, i don’t know

actually wanted to start over but was convinced otherwise 🙂

on a random note: it’s RAINING outside. which is great and unbelievable. but true. way, way too late to rain this time of the year.

on a second random note: watching “brideshead revisited” UK series from 1981. great adaptation of the book.

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another illustration workshop

i took yet another illustration workshop with this painter.  we’ve learned some of his preferable illustration technics. i played a little with watercolors for the first time in may be 15-16 years…    in this little study i’ve combined watercolors with printed cutouts (the petals).  u basically smudge some gouache on to a plastic/nylon sheet and then press a piece of chromo paper (very smooth paper that doesn’t absorb paint) on to it, when u separate the sheets u get interesting patterns on the paper. u let it dry and then cut out the shape u need for your illustration (a leaf, a flower, an animal, ect.) and glue it on your painting  (i think i’ve explained it horribly but you can see it all on this painting if you watch closely)

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in the clearing, in the meadow

so my father makes a living writing children poems most of his life (true story 🙂 )   and this is one of them that i tried to illustrate here, i’m not capable to translate it properly so

i google translated the beginning and the ending of it

(the main part was too tricky for google transtation)

In a field, on the lawn,

I lay in silence.
On the lawn, in the blue shirt,
And I’m only twelve.
………………

………………

……………..

Smile on my lips,
On my heart – sadness.

in the main part of the poem the kid stares at the clouds above him and thinks

how it’s sad that he can only live one life and can’t live many different interesting lives, in many different times and places

to me this poem is also a little bit about death or rather – life seeping through fingers like a cloud….

but i think in the painting i didn’t quite grasped the sadness part….

but, you know, whatever…., i did the best i could

besides my dad seems to really like it and that’s what matters, right? 🙂

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“smoke break”

this is a better photo of the last drawing. it’s flipped ’cause that’s how it looks in reality and i forgot to flip it in photoshop. next thing i’m going to do: a simple illustration on one of my fathers poems  and then try to illustrate a children’s book.

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