Design: 21st Birthday Invitations

I've just finished some birthday invitations for a 21st birthday. I was asked for fractals in blue, green and purple – but since I don't have a clue how to use fractal programmes, I simulated the effect with a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator. Fortunately, seahorse tail fractals were the type of choice anyway!

I created the shape to be used for the fractals in Illustrator, then took it into Photoshop, duplicated, resized and slightly rotated it, and then repeated that command until I had a swirl. It took me a few goes to get a swirl I was happy with, duplicated it a few times, and I ended up with this:

Naturally I couldn't leave it looking like that, so I added some spirograph-type designs (created in Illustrator) and some glowy bits, until I had something much more atmospheric. I added the text in inDesign, using Takion for the font; the birthday boy loves science and mathematics, and I felt that font fitted that theme nicely.

The majority of the invitations were emailed out, but for those that were to be posted, I got 5x7" prints done at a Kodak Photobooth. This meant some of the border was chopped off, but they still came out very nicely. 

Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign CS6

Sketch: Southern Belle

Here's a sketch I worked on, on and off, for a week. When I started it I had been intending to sketch something far more adventurous, but I was feeling very stressed and extremely disillusioned with people in general... and so fell back on my default of pretty girls in pretty dresses instead. I could overhear a western my father was watching in another room, involving a pretty girl from the South, so I went with a saintly Southern Belle with magnolia in her hair.

Working on all those frills and curls was very therapeutic. =) It's across 2 pages of an A5 Moleskine sketchbook. 

And the other day I slapped some colour on in Photoshop CS6, as a warm-up for some digital work. I quite like the way the dress came out, but I'm not too enamoured of the rest of it... the colouring took about 40 minutes. 

Orders of Service

My Great Aunt died (at the grand age of almost 94) on the 12th, plunging us into frantic funeral planning. She was in a lot of pain, and we were very sorry to see her go, but some people didn't seem to appreciate her qualities as maybe they should (she had her faults, but don't we all?) so I wanted to make sure she had a nice Order of Service to send her off in style. She actually had two services (a funeral and a memorial service) but we used the same cover for both, only changing the information inside.

Previously I have done photo collages of important items for orders of service, but as all such important items were in Moora about 100 miles away, this was out of the question. Also, as we were not going to a professional printer, I couldn't arrange for printing right to the edge of the cover, which would have spoiled the effect somewhat. 

Aunty Phyl loved flowers of all kinds, so I went to the Victorian Language of Flowers for inspiration, as no one could really tell me a specific favourite flower, and made a border for use on the booklets:

This contains the following:

Michaelmas Daisies – farewell

Harebells – grief

Green Locust Tree – affection beyond the grave

Osmunda – dreams

Persimmon – "bury me among nature's beauties"

Red Poppy – consolation

White Poppy – sleep, my antidote 

Weeping Willow – mourning 

I did a very rough version in Photoshop to start with, so I could work out roughly where everything should go, then a clean sketch on paper, which I inked and coloured digitally in Adobe Photoshop CS6 with a Wacom Intuos 3. I was inspired by Kate Greenaway's Language of Flowers, and added a faint halftone pattern to the whole thing to subtly suggest older printing methods and add a bit of texture:

Once the border was done I inserted photographs into it. A large, fairy recent (taken at her 90th birthday, but I didn't have access to anything taken more recently) photo for the front, and a smaller photo from the 1930s for the back. The font is Melany Lane. 

I added some swirls (from the Melany Lane Ornaments font) to fill up empty space on the front. We got them printed at Officeworks, but unfortunately not all of the swirls ended up printing and those that did were much more subtle (although not quite as subtle as appears from this photo =P)

I also did the interior of the booklet, using Adobe Indesign CS6. The inside cover contained a dot-point timeline of her life, and we managed to fit the whole order of service onto the front and back of an A4 page (so four booklet pages) and even had some room left over for a little decoration. For this purpose I did a linework hyacinth ('constancy', but also a flower she was very fond of):

I coloured this digitally for use on the Thank You cards:

I printed these (two per A4 page) myself, and used a punch to get the round corners.

Illustration: Standing Stones

I've had lots of work to be going on with during the holiday period, plus all the socialising and stuff that eats away at one's time at this season. Plus it's been really hot, so when I'm not working, I haven't really felt like drawing. But I have taken a little time out to do some sketching.

This was started on New Year's Eve. The ABC broadcast the Edinburgh Military Tattoo then, and it's a family tradition to watch it. The show this year was opened with schoolkids dressed as Picts, which inspired this image. It took me a few days to sketch it, and then a few more to add some digital colour:

Click for a larger view!

I suppose I'm looking at about 6 hours, all up, but I wasn't really keeping track.It's not meant to be anything spectacular, and it's rather rough around the edges, but I like it!

Here's the original sketch:

And just for fun, here's a little pic of someone wearing a bearskin hat (also done while watching the Tattoo, of course). My father gave me a Wacom Inkling for Christmas, and I was playing around with it, getting the hang of it before I inserted it into my working routine. This started as a fairly simple sketch, which I then imported into Photoshop. The Inkling isn't entirely accurate with line placement, so it's better suited to images where that isn't an issue, but I tried to embrace that situation, and coloured it using the magnetic lasso tool:

Silhouette Christmas Cards

And here's our second Christmas card design. 

This was a nice excuse to be a bit nostalgic and return to my Golden Age influences; when I did my honours project on the era I didn't get to do any silhouettes, but I love them. I did have grand plans to do the whole 12 Days of Christmas, but it became clear that I was going to run out of time, so I just finished off the first. I got about halfway through 9 Ladies Dancing as well, so hopefully I'll get time to finish that up in the near future. 

I put the design in a circle, to tie my two very different cards together. And then of course I added glitter:

I originally started without any clear idea of what era I wanted to depict, and did four draft silhouettes before I decided. Here they are, showing the 1780s, the 1800s, the 1830s and the 1920s:

Eventually I decided on the 1780s, as that's around the time The Twelve Days of Christmas was first published in England.

Adobe Photoshop CS6.

Reindeer Christmas Cards

I did two Christmas card designs for our own cards this year. I always like to do two for a bit of variety. 

The first card features an illustration from last Christmas. I cleaned it up a little and put it in a circular frame:

I printed all our cards straight onto white cardstock this year, which saved me a bit of cutting out (I just had to trim each card to a square). I also printed a message inside each card, and my logo on the back. It wasn't quite as simple as all that, however, as I then added lots of glitter, which my mother always likes to have on Christmas cards. These cards had gold glitter around the inside of the frame, and gold and green glittered baubles:

Winsor & Newton watercolours and Adobe Photoshop CS6.

Illustration: Pygmy Possum Christmas Cards

Some friends asked me to design some Christmas cards that were reminiscent of May Gibbs, and featured Australian wildlife. The design they decided on was a western pygmy possum among eucalyptus flowers and leaves:

For those wondering, May Gibbs was an Australian children's author/illustrator in the first half of the 20th century, who wrote and illustrated the classic Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, as well as many other titles. 

I originally came up with three concepts, two featuring western pygmy possums, and one featuring a scarlet robin. 

Once the design had been decided upon, I inked it traditionally using sepia Faber-Castel PITT artist's pens and then added colour in Adobe Photoshop CS6:

We got them printed at Moo, who always do a lovely job. Since they allow multiple designs in one order, I made up a number of colourways, and three were decided upon – red flowers, pink flowers and yellow flowers. Here's a snap of the pink and yellow (with 'Merry Christmas' in 'leaf writing' in the top left). The satin finish of the printed cards works really well with the illustration, I think. =)