in the midst of winter

Every once in a while I find artwork so amazing that it simply must be shared. I found these wonderful pieces of typographic artwork by Matthew Kavan Brooks via Miss Moss and fell in love immediately (and be sure to check out Miss Moss if you like unique photographic layouts and great art and fashion finds). They can be purchased in many different forms (prints, iphone covers, t-shirts, etc) at Society6. I wouldn't be surprised to find them selling like hotcakes!

I, myself, might just have to go ahead and order something with my favourite piece on it - "In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer".

Oh, what's that? You want to follow me on twitter? Why, be my guest!

@kfitzdesign

twirl

And another Illustration Friday challenge rears its head. I took this week's word, twirl, at face value. Immediately I thought of dancing - and perhaps I still had last week's challenge in mind, because I definitely wanted to convey a sense of euphoria and/or abandon as well. Lucky for me, inspiration for this one was easy to come by. I've still been on a Carl Erickson kick, and thought his style would lend itself well to my illustration this week. Here's some of his work I particularly wanted to emulate:

His ability to draw the human form precisely, yet remain rigid in his style is impeccable. Well done, Erickson... definitely something to aspire to. 

Like last week, I was also inspired by music for this project. Gaga's got a hold on me, people.. what can I say? I was looking to convey euphoria and abandon - well that's exactly what Lady Gaga does in her song, So Happy I Could Die. Wanna listen? Yea, you do! 

My idea was to illustrate a girl "twirling" in Erickson's style as best as I could. After a few attempts, I was pretty happy with what I had so far:

For this piece I also wanted to add a photography element - well, I had a photography element I wanted to add. I recently took some shots of blurred street lights, and I felt they suited the twirling/euphoric/abandonment vibe I was going for here. Here's a couple examples of the photography I decided to integrate:

Twirly, right? Right.

After getting all my elements organized; I scanned in my sketches, traced my favourite one in PhotoShop, placed it on the photograph I chose, added effects, text and did alot of transform editing - and Voila!

Oh yes, and the stars are stickers I used on my sketches - after some editing, I decided they could stay. They are a reference to a line in the Lady Gaga song I used as inspiration; "Stars in our eyes, 'cause we're having a good time".

fading summer

Side note: I do not own the photographs used in this piece. Please credit back to this blog if you use this image, thank you! 

Here's a little something I created in PhotoShop recently. The idea is to make it into a laptop skin (even though I do feel slightly bad covering up my beloved Apple apple). Looking at this makes me miss summer quite a bit - but no time to get nostalgic! Too many projects, so little time... And I'll be sure to post them all once completed, so please check back often!

And in memory of summer, I felt it was appropriate to share my favourite summer 2011 playlist.
Summer 2012, I'm waiting for you.

Fading Summer from kfitzdesign on 8tracks.

in vogue

Click the image to see more Carl Erickson Vogue illustrations

I have just picked up the books I put on hold and the library and have been having quite a nice time going through the illustrations in my many books of choice. One such book is Fashion Drawings in Vogue: Carl Erickson by William Packer - it is a collection of the many illustrations Erickson did for Vogue throughout the late 1920's and onward. Not only are these illustrations wonderful, they are influential within the fashion illustration industry. Flipping through his work, I'm feeling very inspired! If I end up creating something half as good as Erickson's work, I'll be sure to post it for you. But for now, I've scanned some of my favourite excerpts from this handy little book and uploaded them to my Flickr sets, if you enjoy fashion illustration I recommend checking them out here.

And PS: The illustration on the first page of the book is entitled An interview with Chanel, (1954); now if that isn't vogue I don't know what is.

sketchbook snoop

Image: Catell Ronca Via Hivenn 

One of my favourite blogs is Hivenn - and I've recently decided (...like five minutes ago) that I should go ahead and try to get a sketchbook together to submit to her Show Me Your Sketchbook Sunday weekly blog posts. I'm always so inspired and impressed by the great sketchbook pages she posts and figured hey,  let's give it a shot. I definitely have a hard time keeping my doodles in one place - but with sketchbook inspiration like this, why not try to get my creative ideas all in one little book?

Her most recent Show Me Your Sketchbook Sunday featured Catell Ronca and her colourful designs (excerpt above); check it out here.

If you have sketchbook pages that are internet worthy (of course they are!), Hivenn welcomes you to send your pages to her blog and you could be featured!

prepare

I've decided to participate in Illustration Friday's weekly challenges; last week I completed a sarcastic t-shirt for the word 'grounded' and I've just completed the challenge for the week of the 16th - 'prepare'.

Immediately when I thought of the word prepare, I thought of bracing yourself - perhaps for a crash landing (what is with me and planes?) - and then something came to mind. One of my favourite songs is Hurricane Drunk by Florence + the Machine and there is a line in it that has always stuck out for me, "I brace myself, because I know it's going to hurt - but I like to think at least things can't get any worse". Here, have a listen:

I decided to depict what my interpretation of this song is - and lucky for me I found the perfect piece of artwork to use as my inspiration. This 60's piece by Eric Earnshaw served me well as inspiration mostly because of the content - the clenched fist, dead stare and prominent shadow were all elements I wanted to incorporate into my 'prepare' piece. And what a babe:

On top of that perfect piece of inspiration - I recently happened upon British Vogue and guess who was on the cover? Florence Welch herself of course! I scanned the images from her spread and uploaded them to my Flickr stream - check it out here. Some of her quotes in the article really seemed to lend themselves well to my interpretation of the song:

Well Florence, who doesn't love dancing, parties and shots?

Ok - onto the actual illustration process! I sketched out a few ideas and knew pretty early on what I wanted to achieve with this - here are scans of my rough sketches. Key elements: enlarged pupils, clenched fist, drink in hand, shadow and overall basement bar vibe...

I used the sketch in the top right as my jumping off point for my final - which I completed in PhotoShop with many, many layers. I had alot of fun with this - especially adding the background elements (ok, mostly the graffiti, but still).

Oh, she's prepared alright. Poor girl doesn't even have her friends with her in a moment like this - but I know she'll do just fine on her own.

The background pieces are a mix of my own artwork, a vintage Guinness ad, an image from Florence's British Vogue spread and one of my all time favourites - Henri Privat-Livemont's Absinthe Robette. And I'm done! Now to get to work on next week's Illustration Friday challenge.

IWD: never give up on the good times

OK! Here's the update I promised regarding my ongoing International Women's Day poster project:

Below is the (very rough) linear comp I drew and then scanned in to PhotoShop for editing - It's a pretty good idea of what I'm aiming for with this project and I'm really hoping it emulates the Al Parker work I chose as my inspiration.

And now with the colour! I'm pretty pleased with the colour/pattern choices for the hair and outfits of our beloved spice girls (not that it was difficult to decide what they would wear...) - But it was the background and type I had quite a bit of trouble with regarding colour and placement (just look at the first colour comp).
The example below is the first arrangement I landed on... and it's not my favourite. I was hesitant to post it but decided to include it because it helps to show the progress I've made with the arrangement of the composition - and perhaps a good example of subpar use of space?

After looking at my first attempt, I realized immediately that the girls need to fill up the page more. There is too much negative space, especially when I have no plans for much of a background. And thank god for PhotoShop because in the digital world, enlarging images is a piece of cake!

Lo and behold here are some examples of my updated composition:

Still needs lots of work - and to be completed in acrylics - but it's definitely progressing. Wish me luck on this project as I feel I might need it (there's no undo button when it comes to acrylics!) - and hold onto your knickers, girls!; I will be posting more on this project as I continue with it. Next step: full size linear comp and paint, paint, paint!

Sunday drivers... It's only Saturday!

monster art

Gaga sent a tweet to her monsters requesting drawings of her wearing pearls for V Magazine - I didn't exactly draw her wearing pearls, but I thought of one of her lyrics and went with it...

grounded

What do you think of when you consider the word "grounded"? The interpretations can be endless and the ways to convey "grounded" through art are even more endless. That is what is so great about creating something - it's your own.

Grounded is the word provided by Illustration Friday for last week's art challenge (every week artists submit their work based on a given word - read more here). I've decided to participate every week and so far, so good!

Immediately when I thought of the word grounded, I thought of a grounded airplane - a common annoyance and sometimes major problem for frequent flyers (and the reason I failed an exam back in university due to a 32 hour delay that kept my friends and I in Cuba instead of in class). I wasn't sure exactly how to depict it though - a plane sitting on a runway seemed too boring to even consider expanding on. I really liked the airplane theme though and decided to keep with it and then it came to me; that damn seatbelt sign that keeps you in your 17inch wide prison with no escape. What's more grounded than that? I see it as a symbol that most flyers despise and therefore would make a relatable graphic for a t-shirt design.

My process began with a little encouragement from artists that inspire me. When I came across artwork by John Averill I decided to try to emulate his style. I really enjoy the whimsical feel, shapes and texture of his advertisements as well the simplicity of his work. I felt it was the right approach to create a piece with such a graphic symbol as its focal point. Here are some examples of his work that I tried to emulate for this project:

If you look closely you can see the texture (almost like tissue paper) on the work on the left. This was a big reason I wanted to emulate Averill's work - while the shapes are simplistic, the texture keeps it interesting. And while I had a style in mind in which to complete my project; I needed to start on the content - hence, thumbnails!

I played around with adding personification to the buckle or the arrow in the seatbelt sign, but I couldn't get it to look quite right so I let go of that idea and kept it really simple.

After deciding on a couple key elements to my design, I began work on colour composites in Adobe Photoshop (I prefer it over Illustrator, even for graphics like these). The most important (and exciting!) part of finishing up these comps was adding the parchment paper texture overlay - my attempt at recreating the texture Averill uses in his 7UP ad above. I simply placed a high resolution image of parchment paper over my completed comp and adjusted the layer to 'overlay' mode - and voila! Here are some of the final options for my design:

After some contemplating over the "Lockdown Mode" type, I decided to keep it as it is fitting to have sarcastic commentary on a t-shirt and humour was my main target for this project. It exemplifies the sarcasm I was hoping to achieve by comparing sitting in your plane seat to a level of crisis. It definitely suits the "first world problems" trend that seems to be gripping North America's youth.

Alas, I arrived here:

I don't have any friends that are flight attendants or anything of the sort, but if I did - I would buy this shirt for them - wouldn't you? ;) It was really fun to share this process with you and hope you'll come back to see what I've done for next week's Illustration Friday word challenge!

IWD: viva forever

Above are two of many, many pieces of Al Parker's artwork. I love the style he uses - simple use of line with the combination of flat colour and texture. Not only do I love the style, but the content is inspirational on its own. The way Parker depicts women appeals to me greatly, which brings me to the project this work has inspired...

International Women's Day is fast approaching (well, sort of) and I have begun work on creating a poster for IWD. Being a woman myself, naturally I think it's a very important holiday and am excited to work on a poster supporting it. Now, being a child of the 90's, I immediately relate women's rights to girl power. Yep, the Spice Girls have a special place in my heart and for that reason I've decided to feature them in my poster... how could I not?!

Yes, they might have been just a pop group but when you look beyond the platform sneakers and goofy spice nick names they really did have a major impact on the feminist movement. Young girls everywhere were inspired by girl power and it really was liberating as a preteen to watch these girls skyrocket to success and have the music industry wrapped around their perfectly manicured fingers. But I think I love them most because they were always good for a laugh and a half:

Now that I've defended Spice honour, here are some very rough sketches for the poster I've been working on. I'm hoping after a few more drafts I can emulate Parker's work more accurately, as I'd love to explore that style thoroughly. And be sure to keep coming back here because I will be posting my work as I finish it for this project. Hope you can get an idea of what I am aiming for with this poster.

sharpen your pencils

I purchased this book about two years ago and just like my poor ipod, I lost it almost immediately (the 'tissue box' suggestion was the only one I got to before it escaped me). Turns out a sneaky family member had tucked it away - but behold, it has been found! I really can't wait to begin using it daily. It's simply a sketchbook with pages that tell you what to draw - perfect for practice and perhaps exploring drawing things you never thought you would. If you absolutely love this idea, you can purchase the same book here - but if you don't mind missing out on the fancy yellow cover, why not create your own with sketchbook ideas from here? Anything to keep the creativity flowing - even when it's not.

part of your world

How about a glimpse at my latest internet inspiration find right out of the gate? This has been a very popular blog the last few days due to the recent addition of Disney Princess inspired renderings that bring the characters to life - and I can see why. These 'photo manipulations' are extraordinary - not to mention, I grew up with a Disney obsessed generation so of course they impress me. If you haven't seen the collection yet, check out the entirety of Jirka's work on her online portfolio here.

introduction

Seeing as it's January (happy new year!) and new beginnings are afoot, I bet I'm not the only one out there creating a new blog. As unoriginal as the idea of a new blog for the new year might be, I hope you find my posts to be anything but. Follow me and you will see several of my current projects unfold, receive a few lifestyle notes here and there and find out lots about what inspires me. I hope you enjoy!