Thursday, October 31, 2024

It's been a while...

 


Well, it has been a while since I posted here. Apologies.

Apart from working on illustrations commissions and giving drawing workshops, my attention has been drawn to other places, mainly YouTube. I have been trying to develop my video skills and learn about how the platform works. 

I've also been sending out a regular short newsletter via Pencilbooth. I did think about copying them over to here too? Maybe I should try that, let me know.

My Instagram account celebrated ten years and then I realised that this blog is now more than thirteen years old. A teenager! And I suppose things always change then. The zine I mentioned in the last post is now ready to be published and I am heading off to Clermont-Ferrand next month to exhibit it there.

I'll put some images below a few of my sketches from this year and hopefully I'll show up here a bit more in the future. 


















Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Making a new zine - the process so far...

My first thumbnail layout for the new zine

I am in the process of making a new zine based on my travels in 2023. As I drew in a variety of different sized sketchbooks there are quite a few edits and adjustments to make. I am using Photoshop and InDesign to put the zine together as I used for a previous zine. You can read about previous attempts here and here.

The settings I used to scan the images

I started by making a layout, with thumbnail of each of the spreads. This gave me an idea for the flow of the zine. Then I scanned the sketchbook pages and cleaned them up in Photoshop.


The template for the zine spread

I made a master template for the double page spread size, including an area of bleed for the printing  process.

Once I was happy with the layout, I placed the spread into InDesign. Here are some examples of how they look. I need to add handwritten text too but I felt that the images should be the focus first. The writing will be based on notes I made at the time of the trips and also something about the colours I used on location. 





The places featured are Toulouse, Barcelona, Locarno, Leicester and Santiago de Compostela.

The plan is to have it ready by the end of February so it is available in early Spring in my Etsy shop. 

Monday, January 22, 2024

Videos on YouTube

I have started adding more videos to my YouTube Channel. Here are titles of the latest ones, I hope to make a lot more. Please let me know if there is anything particular that you would like me to make a video about.

Click here to link to the Channel.