Back cover design

Now that I've changed my design to the wrap around cover, I also needed to have a back cover, so I've kind of given myself more work to do. But it's okay! Because it's just the back cover so I don't need as many elements as I do for the front design. Also when i looked at the beyond the surface front and back cover, the back is just an extension of the front image but just the background, so this is the same idea I did for mine. It didn't take me that long so not too bad.

Printing & layout thoughts...

I was just thinking about how I'm going to print this book since James made me realise that it isn't going to be as easy as I anticipated... He said I can print double sided to a size that I can definitely work with, but when he said it might not match up that well, it's made me worry a lot. 

I had a look at the concertina book that I have and how they tackled the layout and how the design adapted to it. I realised that the cover is separate to the main part and all the information about the image is within that card holder. I'm thinking that maybe I should do something similar... 

I don't want to leave the back of my concertina big image blank, but i can have just one big block colour so I'll have no worries with the two sides matching! Then everything else can be with the cover which will help with the packaging, I think this is definitely what I should do.

Commission (2) - Research

Nina Saunders

I wasn't sent any photos that she was inspired by for my illustrations, so i had a look at the ones that I like. I know I don't  have time to do something as elaborate as this, but I do love Nina Saunders' work. She is one of the only female political illustrators that I know because it SEEMS TO BE that this industry is taken over by males and that there's just Nina Saunders, Emily Flanagan and I. 

Anyway

I love how her use of colours create a mood to her illustration, deep reds. I need to think a lot about my use of colour, but from what she said with the illustration before about the publication stock being quite dark I need to make sure my colours aren't dark and that they work with the colour red. 

Front Cover REDO - Complete

Painting - Unedited 

I am quite pleased with how my painting turned out! I'm liking it a lot more than the previous design for the reasons previously explained, as well as the application of the colours. I think that this illustration divides up the six colours better than the design before, and also the use of detail in the finer lines adds more texture to the image. 

The type is also way better than the design before! I know it's only arial bold so it's nothing ground breaking at all. But I think the blockiness lends itself well to my painting style and then contrasts nicely with my hand written type for my name. The white against the dark blue also compliments each other, making the title pop out! 

I don't think it's perfect, because I think that I could have included even more elements to it. But then I suppose it could have made the big illustration not look as complex in comparison, so maybe this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Also the golden eagle looked a lot better in the real life painting, which is annoying. You can't really see the same amount of detail in it. I'll take this as something I need to consider for the future, because I'll be wasting my time with small details if you can't really see them at the result. 

Career thoughts

I've just been looking for some jobs online and it's a bit depressing to be honest. I think maybe I'm just going about it the wrong way and that's why I'm not finding anything, but there just doesn't seem to be any call for me. There's loads for graphic design for starters, I don't think a lot of people know what an illustrator is apart from for pissing children books. And then! It's all for digital! Must be amazing at photoshop, indesign, illustrator! Yeah I can use all of the software, but I wouldn't say I was amazing at it and it's not what I would want my practice to focus on. What's wrong with working analogue these days??????
I think instead of looking for a job on job websites it's gona have to be a contacting people process. So I'm going to do that.

Spanner in the works

So james has thrown a spanner in the works when it comes to printing my book.... I can't print A1 double sided and the only paper that I can use is up to a metre long and 296mm high. So I'm going to have to make some changes to my design to make sure that it fits. Apparently it also is prone to not really matching up that well, meaning that I have to make sure I leave enough room for error as I can. I'm hoping that that is okay for my design because I think the way that it is allows a bit of wiggle room.
I just hope it all goes well.

Front Cover REDO

I was looking at the front cover that I created compared to the covers that I liked during my research and mine was just shit in comparison. Well like it was okay, but not good enough, especially at this stage I don't really see the point of having work that I'm not buzzing about. Also it's the first thing that people are going to see, so it needs to be amazing! 

I went back to the covers through the Nobrow website that inspired me originally and thought what makes these so successful? 

The main elements that I got from these were the use of layers and objects overlapping and creating clever colour changes. This is what I NEED to include in my cover to make it a stronger illustration! I also hated the type on my other cover so this is something that needs improvement also. 

This is my final design that I drew up after doing a few rough sketches. I think that this will be a lot better than the first design because the content is similar to the big illustration, creating more fluidity between the two. I think this definitely one of the reasons why I didn't like my previous design, I don't think that you could tell it was meant to be the cover for that big illustration. There's also more going on, which makes the composition more exciting to look at compared to the previous. 

Timetable

I thought to keep myself in check I should make a timetable and give myself deadlines to work to. This should (in theory) reduce stress levels and keep a happy mind.

I'm quite an organised person anyway so I don't think it will be too hard to stick to, plus i think I have a nice amount of work still left to do, so I should be cool beans.

A definite series choice - Brighton

As I have already said in my PPP module, I am planning on moving to Brighton after uni and that I'm planning on showing my publication to this specific shop (Castor and Pollux). But when I was thinking about what other books i could make in my series, I thought that it would really be worth my time to do one about Brighton. This is because when I went to Castor and Pollux there was a lot of Brighton prints and publications, especially by Mike Levy who seemed to be promoted all over Brighton. So I think it would be really beneficial for me to create a Brighton publication, especially as my book doubles as a travel guide giving information about the place. 

Thoughts for a series

I was just thinking, to turn my book into a sellable series I could have different themes instead of just doing different countries. So I was thinking:

> Geographical - what I have done already - but could also be for more specific cities within a country.
> Temporal - 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s
> Film - different genres within this?
> TV shows - cartoon, drama, soap
> Music - different genres again
> Sport - Could be just specific teams or be more general i.e. football, tennis, rugby

I actually want to do some other versions of my book, obviously after i finish uni because I do NOT have time to make another book before my hand in sadly... I wan to do it after and when I still have access to the repo room (making the most out of the facilities).

Book layout tester

(blank boxes will have writing in them)

I put my front and back design onto the same A1 sheet to see how they would work together, because obviously even though they're not going to be seen side by side together, it's really important for the two sides to compliment each other. 

I'm pretty pleased with how it has turned out. I will probably be changing my front cover, because I don't think it's up to the same standard as my big image and although the big image is the main focus, the front cover is still the first thing that people will see so it has to be amazing. 

All I have to do now is redo the front cover and write a few sentences under each image and a bit about myself, then it can be printed!!!! Exciting

Front cover outcomes

Initial painting

This is the unedited version of the gouache painting that I did for my front cover design. I really liked the initial design that I drew out, but after I've painted it I'm really not sure... The type just looks really flat and I think it ruins the whole thing. I was planning on doing some editing on photoshop anyway, so I had little revamp to try and improve. 

I couldn't improve my painted type it was just too shit. So I had a look on font site and found a neon sign type that I thought would fit best to the design that I originally had in my head. It's a shame because I really wanted to try and do hand written type but it just didn't work out I suppose. There was still something I didn't quite like about it, so I kept at it.

To be honest the only difference here is that I changed the blue strip at the top to pink, because there was too much blue already so wanted a change. I like it more than before, but something still isn't quite right. I think that because I liked the front covers of the other books so much that I have that expectation in my mind, which I suppose isn't necessarily a bad thing, because I want it to be one of the best illustrations I've produced, especially as it's the front cover of my fmp. I think I might redo this because I'm not overly happy with it. 

Front cover designs

After looking at the current front covers from the books that inspired me, I really wanted to produce something that would be the kind of illustration that would work well alongside my big illustration, but also works as a separate piece of artwork. I think it's also important to think about a kind of design that would be easily transferable to a different context but the design be similar (i.e. a different country).

I really liked the idea of having the title of the book as a neon sign, I thought that it would look quite cool because it would be part of the illustration rather than plonked on top of my painting.

I had a look at paintings of neon signs to try and look at how the letters are formed. I only have the 6 colours that I used in my big illustration, so I knew it was going to be quite hard to make it look like it was glowing, but I wanted to still give it a good go. 

Front cover research

These are the front covers of the publications that initially inspired me to create my book. It's mostly the first three ones that I really liked and would want my work to be somewhat similar. I want my front cover to link to the rest of my big image, but not necessarily have the same content. But seeing as I extensively rinsed the subject matters for my big image it is quite hard to think of other ideas...
I want the use of colour to feature heavily, stuff like if something overlaps then the colour changes (like the headlights in my big image) because I think this worked really well for me and is my favourite part of the illustration.

Commission (2) - Final Image

Image complete! I'm getting a lot faster at painting now, this only took me 3 hours to paint, buzzing! I still had my paint palette from my big illustration, and because I enjoyed working strictly with 6 colours so much that I thought I should use them again. I don't think it works as well with this image compared to my big illustration which is a bit of a shame really, but it's still okay I suppose. 

I think the composition is okay, but there's just something i don't really like about it. Like it's okay and I would put it in my portfolio, but it's not something that I would desperately want to show to people in industry which is what I need to be thinking about at this stage. But for this girls FMP zine I think this will definitely suffice.  

She seemed pretty happy with it, all I needed to do was lighten the colours a bit because the paper she's printing on is quite dark which is something that I wish I knew before I painted because I probably would have changed my colour scheme. But didn't matter too much because the change was just a cheeky photoshop job so was no worries. 

Commission (2) - Brexit article - development/ideas

I started with the Brexit article because I think I had a bit more of an idea of what to produce for it.

She had sent me two satirical images of Theresa May that she said she had liked and would like me to produce something similar. This makes it a lot easier for me because this means that i already have my subject matter sorted, I've also drawn her quite a few times before so I wasn't too worried about this one. I was a bit confused though because Theresa May wasn't mentioned in the article that I was given, but I just wanted to produce what she had envisioned so I stuck with that. 

A witch I always think is quite an easy route to go down with Theresa May because she has the kind of face that is very adaptable to one. So I thought this is something I should start working with.

This made me think, who is one of the most well known witches so I can relate it to something... the wicked witch of the west?

Applying what I want to say by using well known films is something that I find to be very effective from doing the ghost illustration. The application to the film adds the hilarity almost effortlessly. Now I'm not saying that this is the easy way out, because applying the right film to the context is also extremely important for communication. Although i think this one is simple enough, Theresa May is an evil witch with a bunch of stupid sidekicks, what film has an evil witch and a bunch of stupid sidekicks, Wizard of Oz, wicked witch of the west, bingo. 

So I began roughing out some ideas of what to do:

After finding this image, my idea came to me. Boris Johnson will be the monkey, Theresa the witch and in the orb will be Brexit. Now to show the girl to see if she likes what I have come up with.

List of publishers i want to approach

I am desperate to get my concertina book out there when I get it finished. This is the first time that I truly believe that my work is good enough to show to people in the industry and I am buzzing about this prospect. I'm going to be in Leeds for a little while in the summer so I had a thought about where specifically in Leeds I could show my book. I'm from London so I will be in and around the place for a while, plus it's obviously a big place and will have a lot to choose from. And finally I am planning on moving to Brighton after university so I had a good look at where I could start my illustrative career. I found a few places when I went there in the summer, so I know there was going to be appropriate places for my books.

MY LIST OF PUBLISHERS/SHOPS I WANT TO CONTACT:
LEEDS
- Village
- Colours May Vary
- Joy
- Hyde park book club
- Waterstones
- Fred Aldos
LONDON
- Daunt Books (specialise in travel)
- DK
- Ink@84
- Look at what's in Brick Lane in general
- People of print
- East end prints
- We built this city - THIS WOULD BE GOOD IF I DID A LONDON VERSION OF MY BOOK
- Print club London
BRIGHTON
- Castor & Pollux
- Phoenix Brighton
- City books
- Kemptown bookshop
- Brighton Creatives

Contacting Mister Phil

Even though I said I wasn't going to contact any more illustrators, but this is different, this is more for my future being an illustrator in Brighton. Mister Phil is a current and successful illustrator living in Brighton and I really wanted to ask him what it's like being an illustrator in Brighton because it would really help me for my future. I already know that it's a creative place and there are studios available and events (a massive reason for why I want to move there) but I want to know what he would suggest and where the best places are! I really hope he replies!

Response from Martin Haake!

I got a response from Martin Haake!! buzzing!! Because he got approached by the publisher he couldn't help me massively, but still gave useful advice! It just really confirmed that I need to approach publishers, he advised to start with one of my favourites. So I need to contact publishers rather than illustrators really... but my book isn't finished at all yet so I need to wait until it's finished then go crazy contacting!

Commission! (2) - PART 2

I'm quite glad actually that she took a little bit longer to give me the articles because I've got PPP coming out of my ears so I wouldn't of had time if she wanted me to do them before. 

Although the article I got sent was a bit hard to illustrate, as the content was slightly lacking so found it hard to come up with ideas for it. So I asked her directly what she wanted for the illustrations to try and help me out, especially as I don't have all the time in the world. 

It should all work out fine, these shouldn't take me too long to do either so I definitely have time for it. I can also use them for my portfolio so is also doing me a favour which is good. 

Selling prints!

I had posted an advertisement to sell print versions of my painting on social media, and i actually got responses! Some from people I don't even know! I haven't got any printed yet and already have had a lot of interest (One is my mum but still an order nevertheless). I'm really excited because i've shared stuff before in the past about selling my work and I've never had much of a response before! This might not mean a lot to some people but this is big for me! This response is making me optimistic for my final publication!

Contacting Martin Haake

PPP ASIDE. I contacted Martin Haake because he was such an inspiration for my Mexico book. I wanted to know what to do about going about going to publishers and what do I say and his own experience in the field. I do feel a bit hopeless about stuff like this because approaching people I don't know is not in my comfort zone. So I thought asking a successful illustrator for advice about how to go about it is a smoother step and hopefully will help lots.

Completed it mate

FINISHED IT!!! I'm so pleased with how it turned out, I never thought I could produce anything like this. I'm really glad that I gave this composition a go, because I was thinking of just scrapping it and trying something a lot more comfortable. It's made me realise the capability of my illustrative ability (if that actually is a word) and it's given me more confidence for the future to try new things and really push myself. 

I also think this is going to be great for my portfolio, because it is completely different to everything else in it, especially for colour and composition. I'm excited to see what it's going to look like as a concertina publication, hopefully it won't go downhill from here.

3/4 sections complete!

I've been painting this every day for the past week and it feels like I've got gouache coming out of my pores... But I'm almost finished! I'm so excited to see the final result! This is the first time where I'm looking at something I've painted and I'm genuinely impressed with what I've produced. It isn't just the same 30x30cm frame with an image in the middle, I have pushed myself to produce something way out of my comfort zone and proven to myself that I am versatile.

Zine Commission!

I had just posted my 2/4 section complete on my big illustration and I got a message from a photographer who has a fashion line in production and asked to collaborate for a zine! This is massive for me because this is the first time I've been asked to collaborate through social media and not knowing them at all! And it's all because of this painting! Buzzing! I really don't have much time now so I'm hoping that he gets back to me in a few weeks because he said he didn't have a clear idea right now of what he wants. Also it will be paid! Yay!

First section complete!

I've just finished the first section of my Mexico painting and I'm really happy with how it's going! I was a bit weary of how the colours were going to work together, even though they're the one's I took from the Locomotion book, I have never used this palette before so I was apprehensive of the result. But I'm so glad I've just used these 6 colours instead of using a 'realistic' colour palette because I think it wouldn't come together as nicely. 

Some parts are quite detailed, so I need to make sure that throughout the painting that they are parts with lots of detail just so it works together better. 

Colour palette

I had a lot of fun colour matching my gouache to the Pantone colour postcards that I had put together earlier as my colour palette choice. Surprisingly, it was a lot easier to recreate this colours then I thought it would be... 

I wanted to make the six colours in bulk so there wasn't a chance that the paint would run out and I would have to try and recreate the same colour and I didn't want to risk it being slightly off and then ruining the fluidity of the painting. 

Design trace - process

This part is quite long... I needed to trace my initial design onto the nice somerset paper so I get a lovely finish with the gouache. SO annoying though! Because the A1 somerset paper that I bought from the library isn't quite long enough, which i don't think makes sense because my design is four A4s long so I would have thought that would be A1, but maybe I am wrong. 

So I had to shorten my design which is a bit annoying, but I suppose this means it will take me less time to paint so maybe a blessing in disguise.... 

DESIGN COMPLETE!!!!

Here is a low quality version of my final design for my Mexican book!! I actually can't believe I managed to do it really. It might not seem like a big deal, but from being the kind of illustrator who can only draw spot illustrations in a 20x20cm box to this is absolutely huge for me!!! It isn't perfect by any means, but to me this is a great achievement and even if it goes to shit after I painted it at least I tried to push my skills and I'm happy with just that. 

I'm also happy with the amount and the range of references that I managed to put in, and a lot of them aren't in the stereotypical way - no sombrero in sight. I also did day of the dead quite low key, by just drawing one of mum's alters that she had made for the festival one year instead of doing loads of catrina skulls. The purpose of this is to educate people about Mexico, that it isn't just tequila and Frida, and honestly I think I've been very successful with just that! There's a lot of different subject matters so anyone can find something that they're interested in and would want to find out more about. 

I also thought it would be fitting to draw my mum in the big illustration, seeing as I wouldn't be doing this for my fmp if it wasn't for her. I decided to draw her with the thing that mum loves...

... her MOLCAJETE (aka pestle and mortar)

(Translation: It's incredible the amount you can draw with one pencil)

Also after finishing my big drawing I showed my mum and she replied with this image from her favourite comic from her childhood - Mafalda. It's funny because obviously the cartoon strip isn't meant to be life changing or particularly deep, but it did actually make me think wow I managed to do all of that with just one pencil, it's interesting when you think about it like that, well to me anyway. 

Reference Imagery for the Mexican book

All of the images that I used when drawing my big illustration for the front of my Mexican concertina book.