book

Lot’s To Do, No Time To Do It- An Autobiography

| Rolo
The Black Shuck- Digital Painting

As promised, I’m going to use this post to talk about the fact I’m co-illustrating a book with my girlfriend which is getting published on October 31st, this is like a dream come true! Since the last post, I have managed to complete the 2nd illustration which depicts a Black Shuck, which is a ghostly black hell hound from East Anglian folklore that is said to roam the coastal town of Norfolk, causing havoc and death wherever it roams. The book is going to be comprised of a few of Lenora and Miss Jessel’s favourite posts from their blog ‘The Haunted Palace’ which has been exploring the darker side of folklore, history and the supernatural since 2013; it is an interesting read and really fits with the kind of things I am into. The illustrations are primarily going to be dark and eerie, and of the gothic sensibility, a style I have loved doing since I was a small child so I am unbelievably happy to be taking on this commission, alongside some of my favourite people.

Black Shuck initial sketch

The illustrations I have done so far have started with a pencil sketch that I showed to my aunt to make sure she was happy with the composition of the piece and so she can offer any suggestions or ask for any changes, once she is happy, I scan the sketch onto my computer and do the final linework and colour in Photoshop using my Wacom tablet and brush tools. This is a different process to how I used to work digitally, previously I would do all of the linework in Illustrator before moving into Photoshop for to colour, but I have since realised that Photoshop is a more than capable program for painting the entire piece, and it is the industry standard for digital illustrators. I am doing my best to draw them in a consistent style, which is going to be vital as they are going to be published in a book and not only that, but I’m doing it for someone I care about, my aunt and I really don’t want to let her down because I know how much this means to her. It is my first time being published, I’ve never took on a project this big before and I am a bit worried, there is a lot of pressure, especially since I have college work to do alongside it, I have given myself a lot to do and there isn’t a lot of time to do it. I seriously need to work on my time management and planning, it’s something I always seem to struggle with, despite the fact seem to end up doing more work than people on my course. Part of me thinks that I work well with the stress, that I need it to work, and maybe that’s true, but it isn’t easy on me, it messes with my head sometimes and I find it hard to enjoy myself even when I’m not working, because even when I’m not physically moving, I’m thinking about the work. I think I could make my life a lot easier if I created some sort of timetable or planner, set myself time to work on each project and allow myself to chill when I’m not.

Haunted Palace Blog Logo- Digital painting

The stress is only one part of this commission though, yes I am finding it difficult to balance the book illustrations with college work, but I’m still doing it, and in a way it’s going to provide me with valuable experience that a lot of people my age don’t get. I’m learning to communicate with a client, compromise with them and give them what they want without jeopardising my own wellbeing. Plus, all of the illustrations I do for the book will make amazing additions to my professional portfolio, which could help me to get more work in the future. Not only that, but I’m getting published at 22, I’m doing something that will make people I care about happy and I get to do it with my girlfriend, literally the only thing that is making it difficult for me is the fact that I also have project work to do alongside it. I guess this will be a good growing opportunity for me, it’ll force me to work to a schedule, juggle projects and better manage my time, which is going to be important after my course if I have any hope of being a full-time illustrator. I am hoping that I’m able to incorporate the book work with my college work at some point though it would make my life that little bit easier as I wouldn’t have to worry that I’m not putting enough work into one of the projects because I’m struggling to juggle two different things at once right now.

What Did I Just Watch? And Other Thoughts I Had This Week

| Rolo
King of The Cats sneak peak

Well, I didn’t manage to watch all of the movies over the weekend because I was busy finishing off the King of The Cats illustration for my aunts’ book, which I’m trying to do alongside my university work; I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be difficult but I just need to get better at managing my time.  I watched Blade Runner and House though, I’ll post my reviews of the movies separately because there is just so much to say about them, especially House which is basically a drug fuelled nightmare in all of the right ways. After watching these two I have decided that House is the movie that I am going to focus on creating art for this project, it’s been a while since I did any horror based art and I think House will really challenge me it is far from a normal horror movie, the style, tone and atmosphere of the film are unlike anything I have ever came across before. I think choosing House for this project will really push me as an illustrator and take me far out of my comfort zone which will be a good thing to show in my portfolio.

Double paged spread House moodboard

On Monday we were asked to create a mood board for one of the films that we will be able to refer back to for ideas during the course of the project, I actually ended up creating two because I just couldn’t fit all of my ideas for House on one page. On the mood board I have included images of the main protagonists, antagonists and supporting characters, as well as images of some of the many bizarre scene changes and special effects that are plastered throughout the film. I watched the movie on my laptop, so I was able to get reasonably high quality screenshots of key scenes in the film which I cut and stuck into my sketchbook.  I also used the eyedropper tool in Photoshop to take samples of the main colours that House uses so that I have an idea of what colours to use in my development and my final illustrations. The whole point of the Little White Lies front covers is to capture the themes, atmosphere and visual tone of the specially selected movie, this can be done with the use of linework, colour and composition of the illustration, the colours used should reflect the movie in order for it to be successful which is why I sampled the colours directly from the movie.

LWL House thumbnail sketches

As well as creating a mood board, one of my tutors kindly created a worksheet that contains four blank Little White Lies front covers, we were asked to sketch 8 different front cover variants as part of our initial ideas and development. So far, I have sketched out four out of 8 designs, taking inspiration from the House movie, as well as some illustrators that have previously created covers for LWL to do so. I have found it really difficult so far because no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get any of my people portraits to look right, I also can’t decide who the main character in House is, and I’m supposed to be creating a portrait of them. The plot of House is so confusing that I think 3 characters present in the film are all the same person by the end and one of them isn’t even human. I have tried to combine fragments of all 3 of their faces to create one unified portrait which hasn’t went very well either, trying to show all three characters was too much, it compromises the appearance of all of them. I also tried doing something similar using two of the main characters faces instead, which worked a lot better because half of the portrait is a cat which is something that I am much better at drawing. I used the iconic mirror scene from House to frame the design which really works to me compositionally, so far, my second design is the strongest and the one I want to develop further. Speaking of cats, I’m going to create a wholly separate post at some t point talking about my King of The Cats illustration because I am unbelievably happy that my art is going to be published and I want to talk about it.