*Happy weekend everyone*

I plan on using those textures as backgrounds for drawings.

( If you’re interested about the way I make my illustrations you can read about it here.)
So here are few of those simple doodles I made lately which may or may not end up as part of actual illustrations : )

Some of the original sketches for my book. Some of them are already scanned, colored and used in final illustrations, some are still waiting for their turn.

Coffee: 1
Jellyfish drawing: 0

Finally after feeling unwell over the last three days I’m much better today and ready to share a post about process of creating my illustrations. When I thought about that process it reminded me a lot of cooking so I decided to represent this post as if I were writing a recipe.
So here it is: a recipe for an illustration, a one in particular called:

Just as in a real recipe first we need to start with the main ingredients for our dish, in this case the main ingredients for an illo are wolf, tree and candy. Here you can see a photo of original drawings:

After that we put our main ingredients into a nice big pot i.e. we scan them into computer, into a software of our choice and start cooking them (coloring and then composing into one big piece.)
First I colored tree and Wolf and composed them into a 4000x4000px canvas in Photoshop:

I colored candy separately…

… and then composed into a piece as well:

Just like any good meal needs some seasoning so do my illustrations need that extra something by which I mean some extra patterns, textures or backgrounds. Usually when I don’t feel inspired to draw I sketch abstract shapes or make textures that I later add to my illustrations. For example:

After adding some textures and extra layers and maybe tweaking colors and contrast a bit , illustration is pretty much done and all it needs a little story to accompany it.

Wolf finds a Candy Tree

On one of his relaxing walks through the woods Wolf came across a real, genuine Candy Tree! You can imagine his surprise and overwhelming feeling of bliss when he stumbled across such a rare treasure. He starred at it in awe thinking: “Oh, a real Candy Tree! What a precious find! So much candy to pick and all for me, I must be the luckiest beast in the entire forest!” After enjoying this magnificent sight Wolf hurried to get a huge basket and a ladder so he can pick the candy and eat them all by himself share them with his friends.

I hope you liked my recipe for an illustration!
Bon Appetit

Yesterday I’ve been painting tote bags (for sale) almost all day but these were only two I managed to take a photo of because all of them are already gone today which is a good thing of course. Oh, and sorry about low quality photos, haste and use of inappropriate lens took its toll

A friend gave me some shabby pieces of plywood and I decided to use them in making some DIY Christmas presents, I decided to make holiday glass coasters. I only wish I sanded the plywood before painting it because the texture of surface is a bit coarse but otherwise I’m not unhappy about how they turned out.

In unrelated news, prints of my illustrations are now available via new German based, print selling website called artflakes.com and my spot (I’ll be putting more images in shop soon) can be found here.

In even more unrelated news, can you believe it’s almost December?! Time flies and 2011. is almost here! Which reminds me of another thing I’ve been doing: printing these simple and cheap 2011. calendars:

A page from zine, work in progress.

In love, one of the recent drawings.

Happy mushroom doodle still needs to be colored (probably in bubble gum pink and silver).

Have a lovely Sunday!