Teacher - Illustration Friday

Not all teachers are cool. Some are like shadows from medieval times.

Short anecdote: When Harry Potter first arrived in Poland and there was that big BOOM over this book, some teachers decided to do something about it. In my sister's school (elementary) the headmaster announced that Harry Potter books are evil and all pupils caught reading the books during breaks will be punished. Wicked :) Of course it didn't stop anyone from reading - it even made a big storm between parents and the headmaster and brought new readers who wanted to see where this evil in the book actually is.
Wonder if that headmaster even read the book in the first place...

There is a bit of story written on this illustration. It's about a rabbit princess trying to find a Royal Carrot ;)

I've made this illustration in a different way than I usually do. It stressed me a bit - for most of the time the picture looked rather wrong :P But I guess I've managed to get it right in the end. What do you think?

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Traditional printing classroom

I don't know if I have ever showed how my favourite place on the University looks. It's a place where I work (or rather 'worked') on my fab Faceless Faerie series of illustration. What I like the most about this place is that you can take over the whole room and then workflow is just incredible :) You just have to find the moment when you'll be alone there.

 This is the work place the way I see it when sitting at the great table. You can see a press in the middle, a table on the left where you apply the ink and make all those dirty preparations, a sink just behind the press to wash your dirty hands (it's better to wear gloves than try to wash off paint with water ;) ), on the right inside this kind of aquarium is a place where you wash off paint from your offset stencil. And on the table you can see my 'Bus' print :)

Faeries always sit somewhere near me :)

But during working on traditional prints they usually sleep in my pencil case or on my notebooks :)

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Ripple - Illustration Friday

I have finished all my commissioned pieces so I'm free to improve my skills and spend all my time doing only this. My vector works are a bit under-appreciated so I've decided to use IF's weekly themes as a motivation to create something vectorish every week. It's supposed to be rather simple - just to practice and start finding my own style in this medium.

And now let's think where is the ripple in this picture... Hmmm ;) Firstly, the mouse was sitting in a pool and there was only a small ripple on the water. But a position in which she (the mouse) was sitting looked awkward and I changed it into sitting next to a pool and getting suntan. But there still is a ripple there! In her drink! :D


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Yesterday I hang my works on an exhibition and today at 6 pm will be the opening of it. I'll take some photos and show them here


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Diploma exhibition

This Friday traditional printing group will show their diploma works on an exhibition. Mine will be there as well :) I'm not becoming a M.A. this June (I'll become one in September) but I'm still finishing my studies and starting a new life. Wow that sounds dramatic :D

Here you can see the works I'll show. I'll hang them tomorrow.





Have you seen all of them?

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My Blog cries that she feels abandoned

Wow, it's been over a month since I updated my Fabulous Blog! I really don't know how that could happen (and I feel terrible about it).

Life update:
- the princesses pictures still aren't finished - it appeared that I have to make 2 of them once again (they were already finished) because they didn't show Something. It's hard to name that Something, it's just something that makes them look just right. Well, at least a week of work ahead of me!
- I am in the middle of creating my own stationery. It's dedicated to children (and will appear in August/September, just when they get ready to school) and there are some cute and fluffy animals on every piece of it :) You can see some sketches below.
- I've decided to postpone me M.A. exam till September. I think it'll be better for my works - they will be rape then. Now they are only (almost) ready and I'm not happy enough with "ready" - they should be "excellent"
- I should start looking for a real job, the one that happens every day and give me the same and constant amount of money every single month. But what job could it be?
- I want to paint some watercolour pictures! God damn it!! I'm starting to feel wasted and bored with the computer graphic, how long can a person make only it? Even making pencil sketches seems appealing to me lately - everything but no more tablet and photoshop!

I have some more photos to show you - of a newly published tutorial of mine :) You'll see them soon.

I love cheese!

Stretching cat and cute elephant that stands ( cute animals don't have to do anything more than standing :P)

Sleeping panda and a turtle with it's house (all of those above are already finished and ready to be printed, etc.)

This pose was quite hard to draw... But I hope the final piece looks more 'interesting'.

A bear and bees :)

And a lovely meadow with a fat cow.

And now let's get back to work again =o=

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Lan finished! (for today)

Today, to use our school wisdom in practice we went to a museum with our lecturer. There was an exhibition of portraits and self-portraits. Some of them were really neat! (And some were shitty, sorry!). I made photos of two which I liked the most. Those photos were taken with a cell phone so they aren't good quality pictures.

What I liked the most about this portrait is an outline. It looks so art nouveau-ish and I love that style :3

This portrait was incredible! It looked like a photo and was made of transparent layers of oil paints mixed with a lot of turpentine or linseed oil. Amazing! You have to be an oil master to be able to use this technique with such an outstanding result *nods*

Oh! And here is Bob (pronounced [bo:b], with as long 'o:' as you can make). Bob the cat :D

I've made him a waistcoat. But I still need to finish it (a pocket on the front and an embroidery on the back).

And here is another sneak peek of one of my princesses - Lan. I finished her today and I'm totally exhausted! What's more - my computer, Calliope, is dying trying to make so big pictures (they are more than 50cm wide). I need to upgrade her as soon as I get some money. There are 11 princesses left and there's no time to spend waiting till each picture loads and flips horizontally (and I flip horizontally all the time!).

I had some problems with her hair. They were to dark when compared with the rest of the picture - and they are not even black! I needed to add a lot of darker shadows everywhere so they won't come out too much. I still will have to add few...

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Newest traditional printings

I haven't shown you yet my newest printings! They are cute! :D
I'll finish them soon - there's not much to do left and then I'll show you bigger and better versions of them. And then, maybe, I'll colour them with watercolours and sell on etsy... Who knows? :3

From the upper left corner: Me reading a book by Beatrix Potter to Faceless Faeries; Faceless Faeries relaxing in a bath; Faceless Faerie Cat having a flight over woods; family portrait of the Faceless Faeries; Faceless Faerie in the morning; Faceless Faeries preparing a vehicle :)

And here are some sneak peeks of what I did yesterday:

Arabic mosaic in oriental princess's room.

Curious birdie standing on Chinese princess's calligraphy table.

I won't make much during the weekend, only sketches for other princesses and I will show you same of the for sure!

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Boring school day

The more boring school day it is, the more sketches you make during it.

That's a rule :)

Today it was incredibly boring but it seems that next time it will be even more drastic...

A sketch of IF's 'Pattern' topic. The dress will have some pattern on it; don't know what exactly yet.

IF's "Germs" topic. WOW! It's up-to-date :D Here you can see some germs with which I will make something - you will see later :3

A sketch of characters and composition of my entry for "Double Evil" contest organized by Trenchmaker. I think I'll use oils to make this one. Or acrylics if I'll find some money to buy missing colours :)

A sketch of Children's Illustrator's past theme - Dusty Attic. This will be made with oils. I already have a proper canvas!

The same as above but the theme is recent - Trick or Treat and Other Misdemeanours.

This one is a sketch of another contest entry - Your Fantasy World Contest. This will be made in Photoshop, I can feel it in my bones :3

So many ideas! Now I have to get down to work!

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Crazy Faeries - they are everywhere! (Marathon - Day8)

s you may already know traditional printing is one of my favourite artistic activities at school and, therefore, I'm making my Master of Arts in this workshop (short explanation - in our university we have to choose between traditional printing/painting/photography/design/digital something and others and make something, what we decide on our own, in a technique connected with those workshops. Also you have to write a project which can be connected with your work but it's not a must). I have a lot of problems with my general idea and how should the single works look like. For example now, I'm thinking about changing this illustrative style of my works into more modern one by adding to them colourful objects and making compositions out of them. So it won't be a single picture but a big sheet of paper with a composition made of 2-3 pictures in the style I have now and few additional ones looking like made with a coloured pencil... I should give it a try and find out what comes out of it.

On Wednesday we had an exam on our traditional printing classes so before that day I wanted to push my works further in their accomplishment and even start another one to make it look as if I have been working hard ;] I've spend almost whole Tuesday at school making prints and throwing those matrices into an acid every now and then. I was at home after 9 p.m.! >o<

The work with a bathtub is the first I've started (not on Wednesday, earlier you silly ;3) and I've been re-doing it so many times to make it fit the picture I have in my mind that my teachers have started to complain about the slow progress. But I think it's better to make it slow and have a nice effect in the end without any mysterious additions which came no one knows where than make it quick, have a similar effect but also some elements not finished or be not convinced to the result.


Another work is the one with a bus and a bus-stop outside. I really like this one because there are so many characters there: me, faceless faeries, the Queen of Green, fellows with no paces from some of my other works, the big faceless angel (she's faeries friend) and someone with a tentacle - boy, that's a very happy party :D It's a finished work.


This one, though, it's not finished and I'm wondering how to manage it... It's a sunny place presented so I can't just make it black or dark with the lines. However, it can be good to use as the first in me new idea of works - it doesn't have a closed composition so I can easily add something here and there. Hmmm... I should make a project... Going back to the image - I love the idea :) it makes me smile every time I look at it. Those faceless faeries are funny creatures ^^


I've started another work but I've forgotten to take a photo of it. I'm thinking about working on those pictures during the holidays (which I already have) so I will probably show you the progress as soon as I make some :3

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Three goodies

Only good news today! :D

Another Creature came to me on Monday. It didn't tell me what it's name was but it said that it wants to go to my friend, Monster Princess, and stay with her. So on the next day I took the Creature to my school and when my friend came it at once said it's name, Elmo, and that it's a boy.

This is him, Elmo boy :)

*blushes*

He is a shy Creature. At least that's what Monster Princess says. They look good together, though.



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More good news: as I've decided some time ago - I will not make any more still-lives at school. It's been already two classes when I drew what I wanted and what surely is not a still-life and has nothing of apples, ribbons and white cloths in itself.

The idea of a High-Five Enthusiast struck me some time ago, when I was drawing something for a contest (if I remember it right). Firstly, he was supposed to be a bit 3D with his arms reaching out from a paper on which he would be drawn. It would be a good contest work - a bit different from any other. But he ended up as my inspiration on drawing classes and he looks just as I've imagined him.


When I was drawing a High-Five Enthusiast she came to me - a Lady with a white mask and an embroidered dress. Week later I drew her, it was still so clear in my mind, I remembered how everything looked. Those two works are not very 'MINE', I'm not used to do surreal drawings but well, when they come, I can not possibly resist. I even should not try to *nods*


I already know who wants to be drawn on the next classes - he has big and tangled antlers, a deer-like head and there is a shining glass sphere in front of him. Can't wait to make him alive on my drawing!


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And now it's time for the biggest announcement: I've finished my portrait! :D My mum says it looks like me so I think the basic condition of a self-portrait was met. I am ready to work on it a bit in the future, only if I'll be enormously bored and have absolutely nothing else to do, but as for now I'm very very happy with the result ^^ My grandma will be pleased too, I'm sure! (It was made for my grandparents)


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Window to the other side

On Tuesday I started painting. It's the very first painting I have ever done in that specific style - my style. All those oil works I do, most of them at school, are quite boring and they have nothing to do with the things I like and the ones that interests me. The only feature of them that I can truly call my invention are the colours (I love to lie about colours :3 those still lives looks so much better then). I did few painting with Faceless Faeries, which you can see on my DA gallery, but this theme has it's own colour scheme and atmosphere; you can say it's Faceless Faeries' style.

So what about my style?

I've had a little chat with our painting teacher about problems I have while painting. ...actually the problems start even before I begin painting - they appear in the morning when I wake up and get ready for a painting class. I hate to go there and see all those horrible still lives waiting to be painted or drew. I hate to see our model, always the same one; I feel sick when I look at him.

It's like standing in one place all the time. Not a single step forward. And for me standing still is like going backwards. Sometimes it's even like falling all the way down to the very beginning.

That's why I skipped the classes this week and stayed home to paint something that I'll be proud of :) There's no one standing above me and telling be it's a ridiculous thing to paint or that the colours are too colourful or that I'm not painting while looking on a real model and, oh my gosh!, I'm painting straight from my sick imagination ;] lovely feeling <3

However, coming back to the painting classes subject, it's not that bad as it seems. My teacher told me I can paint from imagination, or I can add my own made up details and similar while painting/drawing a still life or the model. It just has to have a bit of sense and be prepared in the same way as other works - with sketches, good composition and a nice idea. Sounds all right to me.

To not fall backwards in this tragic speed I'll try to find my way in the painting world.

Big step forward is going to happen, I think...

And here's what I did till today :3

A sketch :)

Base on a big fibreboard. And who's standing there behind it? >o<

Oh! It's Jenson Button :D So nice he could come and watch me painting :P

I've added a bit of lines to be more sure what's where...

...and few more colours that fit the lines :)

This is how it looks today. You can almost see my very first idea of this self-portrait. Can you see it? :D

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Cezanne on they way

A contest was announced in our school a while ago. It's theme was to find out about Cezanne's or The-One-Whose-Name-I-Can-Not-Remember-Though-I've-Tried and create an still life oil painting on canvas inspired by that artist. It hasn't been clearly described if we have to make a work exactly like that artist, using the same techniques and colours or just show the same attitude towards painting still lives as they did. I read three books about Cezanne, his life, works and problems and I went through plenty of reproductions of his paintings. I didn't want to create a work that can be called "pretending to be Cezanne" but something more like "apples and oranges on white cloth" as he did :)

My sister Kate composed a still life for me since I'm shitty in this matter... All the still lives I have ever tried to compose looked so lame :P

Here you can see the process. Colour of the photos were not adjusted in photoshop, I've just cropped them a bit because they showed the tragic mess I had in my room.






I brought the painting to my school today and gave it to the contest organizers. My friend Bartosz also made a painting, Anne from our group too. I think her works (she made two paintings) are the best ^^

I'll make some photos and show them here as soon as the entrants' exhibition will be showed in our school's gallery. Wonder what the judges will decide and what they will take into account while judging.

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We've got a hamster! :D He's name is Fryderyk and he's happy to meet you :3


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