London Living

It's been a while again, hasn't it?

Since moving to London, I have to say that my interest in keeping up with my social media accounts has plummeted dramatically (well, all bar Instagram which is the only one that I consistently update.) I've no idea why, and I can't see anything igniting a passion within me any time soon that may spur me on to update this blog as frequently as I once used to. That said, I thought I'd drop by again briefly to talk a little about what's been going on over the last 3 months.

Hello, it's me again

Hello blog, my old friend! Since my move to London at the beginning of January the internet on a laptop hasn't really existed for me, hence a lot of Instagram activity but very little activity anywhere else, such as my Twitter, Tumblr or this blog. I've only been here a little over two weeks now but it feels like I've lived in London for a lifetime, so I thought I'd pop by and just share a little update on my experience so far.

Tag: My Creative Journey

Lauren recently created a 'My Creative Journey' blog tag and kindly tagged me to take part too, so I thought I'd take a little time out of my evening to sit down and have a think about my own creative journey as of late. And so the questions go... 

Rob Ryan at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Yesterday, on an extremely dreary Tuesday, me and my friend Jenny (check out her Instagram, she's a fab artist) headed out to Yorkshire Sculpture Park to check out Rob Ryan's current exhibition, made up of various paper cut, laser cut and screenprinted pieces.

Time for a Change

I decided earlier in the week that my blog needed a bit of a facelift, so I sat down today and worked on a new design after piecing together a colour scheme yesterday that I thought would work quite nicely.

alice in wonderland: from first ideas to finals

as this week has been committed to giving presentations and chilling the fuck out after completing my first module of third year, i thought now would be a good chance to talk about the development and process behind creating my final three alice in wonderland illustrations because i haven't really done all that much else creatively this week, but hey, sometimes you've just got to give yourself some time off, and i've done that in generous amounts this last week as the week coming will be spent refining my dissertation for its final hand in this coming friday. so, without further ado, i'll talk through my process as briefly as possible and let the images do the talking. 

character design

for me, character design seemed to be the obvious place to start after choosing which scenes i was going to illustrate. alice in wonderland is such an iconic, well loved story, and as such has been reinterpreted countless times, so i really had to think about what these characters said to me personally, and how i then wanted to interpret them. alice is undoubtedly the centrepiece of the entire story and as such i focused a lot of energy into her, and in the end i wanted her to have a bit more of an edge and an attitude than the alices i've so often seen in films, because in the story i found that she became really quite head strong and confident as it progressed.

composition development

as part of the brief, a portrait format was set for each illustration and i initially found it pretty hard to work around, particularly for the mad hatter's tea party scene, where there's just so much going on. after countless thumbnails and reconsiderations of the scenes, i think i ended up with compositions that helped to show off the personalities i'd developed for the characters rather than masking them in an attempt to fit the brief's specifications, and while i think that perhaps i may have strayed away from the initial brief a little, i think it helped to add the life and vibrancy to them that my work so very much needed.

first drafts to finals

when the drafting is over, that's when the work really begins (or at least for me it is, anyway.) i very much feel at home in my sketchbook and never feel more relaxed or confident than when it's just me and my pencil, so when the time comes to start adding colours, textures and really considering how each element is gonna slot together, i begin to panic a little, which i think is really apparent in some of the earlier drafts of the illustrations. while drafting and redrafting is something of a frustrating process, especially when you have tight deadlines to meet, i can completely see why so much drafting is required to get to the final piece, because you can really look at all the good and bad within your work and work towards making it the best it possibly can be when the final draft eventually rolls around.

i hope you've enjoyed this little peek into my sketchbook and my working process, showing such initial stages of my work really is something of a daunting task for me, but i know from experience that it's nice to see the inner workings and bare bones of other creatives' projects, so i thought it'd be nice to open up for once and lay my creative process down entirely barely for others to have a peek into. i hope you've enjoyed it!

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saturday scribbles

well it was three months of tackling seven different briefs of differing calibres as well as writing a dissertation, but i've made it to the end of my live projects & competitions module and i can thankfully say that i've at least gotten one portfolio piece out of it that i'm pleased with. my alice work was a bit of a bittersweet journey, with lots of character development that ended up being a little futile after realising just how constrictive the required formats were, and then lots of rethinking of the compositions i'd chosen to fit within the formats, but i've made it to the end and now as i look at all three pieces together, i think collectively they've almost made the last three months of toils all worth it for me. as with my picture book in second year, i think i've managed to create three pieces that look like they're mine. it's perhaps something of an odd thing to say, but i think that they're different enough to a lot of illustration i look at for them to become recognisable as my own, as opposed to a regurgitation of someone else's work. whether they work or not is then an entirely different story, but hey, at least i think they have 'robyn' written all over them. i was quick to pop all these three images onto my online portfolio, and if i'm being honest, i'm liking how it's starting to shape up. hopefully the rest of my time at uni will provide me with another three (hopefully successful!) projects to add to it which will then make up my graduate portfolio – eep!

another project from the module which has received surprisingly good feedback is my work for the nhs live project which i've been working on with a coursemate, where in which i've dealt with character design and the illustrative visuals, and he's created a functioning app and some relevant motion work. for assessment, me and ashley simply had to have some rough visuals and a motion piece to propose our idea as somebody from our local hospital is going to pitch the idea to some funders to see if the project will be picked up and brought into reality, so for now it's staying as it is in its somewhat primitive stage. i'm not too sure when the pitch will be made, but after that we'll know if the project will be carried on or not and whether i'll be developing the visuals and characters more. fingers crossed that it does get picked up though, because however much it'll mean having on my plate for the last few months of uni, it would be pretty cool to see my work brought to life for a client as big as the nhs!

so, there we have it, the last three months of my creative life in a nutshell. it's been a little bit more negative than i'd have hoped, but i think i'm finishing on a positive. obviously it's a happy ending, but i do wish i could cut out the self loathing that occurs while working through briefs for my own good and the good of those around me. perhaps that comes with time though? let's hope. 

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sloth totes are go!

it's official, my sloth enthusiast tote bags have now been printed, ironed and popped into my etsy shop for sale! they're for sale at £5 a piece and can be viewed here. also, if you're new to etsy, you can bag yourself a tote bag for just the postage cost using the code below for £5 towards your first purchase:

http://etsy.me/1v8dcUd

i'd like to thank mini mallory for being such a fantastic model, and wish all you sloth enthusiasts (i know you're out there!) happy viewing!

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saturday scribbles

i thought for a change that i'd get my saturday scribbles and uploaded early on in the day to avoid the fumbling around minutes before midnight that usually occurs when i realise that i've neglected to upload this post. 

this week i've been working on my puffin book cover (still, i know, it's taking much longer than i anticipated!) and designing and printing some tote bags to sell in an attempt to raise some more money for our d&ad new blood fund. we carried over my a-z doggies design, and in addition to this i created a cat, pug and a typographic offering so there was perhaps a little something for everybody because i know there are crazy folk out there who aren't dog people, tsk. as well as designing for these tote bags, i've also doodled up a sloth enthusiast design that i plan to screenprint onto bags in the next couple of weeks to sell through my etsy (and of course because i wanted one for myself!) so if you're at all interested, keep your eyes peeled! if you happen to be interested in one of our other tote bag designs, do feel free to drop me an email at robynmakesthings@gmail.com and i'll see what we can do for you! we're selling the bags at £4 each, and then with postage on top it'd probably cost you around the £6 mark to get your hands on one of these!

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saturday scribbles & sunday synopsis

i'm making a habit of this late/missing posting of saturday scribbles and sunday synopsis posts lately, aren't i? with no good reason most of the time, as i pretty much spent the entirety of saturday hungover, chilling out watching films (jurassic park 3 happened and it was fabulous, by the way) and then spent the entirety of today writing my dissertation (i'm not proud that it took me almost 7 hours to write just under 900 words, but hey, it got written eventually) before again then chilling out to watch gogglebox when my friend got back from visiting home at around 10pm. 

workwise, things are starting to look up a little. i finished off my grand central illustration, and in the end i was pretty happy with it. i'm not sure it's something that'll fit what they're looking for, but i think it's true to my style and tone of voice and it's something i now think i'd be happy to display in my portfolio, which is the ultimate goal really, isn't it? i've also started working on my entry for the penguin design award children's book entry, which this year is to design the jacket for carrie's war. initially i wasn't overly impressed with the text, but after having a look at previous covers and really having a think about what the story covered, i've gotten into the task a bit more and have so far quite enjoyed playing around with themes and ideas, i'm just now hoping it continues positively and i adapt my style accordingly and naturally along the way!

i've also had a little bit less of a stress workwise as i worked out that i can use macmillan as my final project piece, which means more time to think about my story properly, and more time to actually get the illustrations done. i was originally going to simply produce four spreads and a rough dummy book as the brief asks as my current module is a fairly short, busy one, but with making it my final project i'll have more time to attempt to illustrate the entire book again, which would be hard work no doubt, but thoroughly enjoyable too, and i think it'd conclude my studies (and my portfolio) nicely. 

i'm also now just under 3,000 words into my 5,000 word dissertation and i'm pretty happy with how it's coming along after receiving such great feedback from my tutor. i've really sunk my teeth into my topic and each and every time i fall back into my research i fall in love with it all over again (lame, i know) because there's just so much to consider and so many wonderful words being shared by various illustrators and authors who have such enlightened, intelligent views about picture books. honestly, picture books are fantastic, and i'm thinking my dissertation could really become something i'll be proud of, which isn't something i'd have previously anticipated. 

so yeah, all in all a more positive week this week for me, let's just hope the pattern continues and my life doesn't slip down the drain in a couple of weeks time when i turn 21 (!!!!!!)

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saturday scribbles

this week's been pretty hectic to say the least as on monday we were briefed on our live projects and competitions module, with our first deadline for the week being on friday. we were given a brief to design a logo for a property development company, and as you'd expect it just wasn't up my street at all. i knocked together a terrible logo pretty quickly for the sake of getting it out of the way asap, but after a chat with my tutor he essentially told me to ignore what the company may want and to interpret it illustratively and to give it the signature feel and tone of voice that all of my work has so it could at least serve as a portfolio piece should i choose it to. within the brief they wanted to keep a bridge as a focal point, so i worked around the idea of the bridge and the fact that the company builds homes and thought about the homes that the bridge and the river it crosses provide for various forms of wildlife, and i've included a snippet of the finished illustration here as the bottom right image. it wasn't great, but i managed to knock it together in the space of a few hours, which for me is something of an achievement. i can spend days musing ideas and composition, so to square that off and actually finish the artwork within a matter of hours is something to be celebrated at the very least. 

to the left of that image is a snippet from an illustration that i'm currently still working on which is another live brief for the rail company grand central. their brief asks artists to create an image that relates to the phrase 'direct to london', so i'm working with the idea that the company is all inclusive and anyone can travel to london whether they're travelling by foot, paw, wheels etc. maybe i just wanted to include a dog in the image somewhere, but i think it's a nice message nonetheless to know that anybody's welcome aboard.

lastly (and hopefully more interestingly!) i started work on this year's christmas cards. i wanted some fun, light hearted, animal pun cards and i came up with 'merry catmas', 'seasons tweetings' and 'jingle pug' and i'm thinking jingle pug's my favourite at the moment! i'm still undecided about whether or not the cards are finished as they are, but if they change i'll no doubt share them via my blog/twitter/instagram at one point or another. 

a pretty meh saturday scribbles altogether this week, i'm hoping it'll become a little more interesting once i begin my macmillan competition entry!

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saturday scribbles

i've had a completely unproductive week since moving into my student house last saturday, but hey, you can allow yourself a week for settling in, seeing friends, and getting drunk more times than is necessary during freshers week, right?!

while i've not created any new illustrations this week, i have had a play around with my doggy design and turned it into some super sweet bunting to decorate my room with and i'm thinking it looks pretty good! i also picked up a print from our freshers society stall on tuesday because it had a slight mark from pink-tac on the top left corner and so wasn't suitable for sale, and although i'm not too sure how i feel about decorating my room with my own work, i know i'm still really pleased with the illustration as a whole. 

speaking of the freshers fair, here's a picture one of our tutors snapped of me and a couple of others on my course as we were heading outside to try and sell a few prints. we had an incredibly successful day, making just over £200 by selling our own prints and freshers guides that we'd put together and we couldn't be more pleased to have kickstarted our new blood fundraising so fantastically – here's to hoping the rest of our fundraising efforts are just as successful!

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saturday scribbles

this week it was my uni housemate's birthday, so as she's an elephant enthusiast i decided to doodle her up and elephant birthday card, and she seemed to be pretty happy with the results which in turn pleased me because i spent a whole day drawing and redrawing, designing and redesigning it because i just couldn't get it to look right! in the end i was pretty happy with the colour scheme and the typography, but think there's definitely room to work on my elephants *adds to list of things to draw relentlessly*

as you may or may not have seen, earlier this week i also gave my blog, twitter, tumblr and portfolio a bit of a facelift in an attempt to bring all the platforms together in harmony, and after having it up for almost a week, i've decided that i don't actually hate the design, but just needed a while to get used to such a major change; again, the colour scheme is what i'm most pleased with, which is bizarre because colour schemes are normally something i just can't get right!

if you follow my instagram, you'll also notice that i've pulled my paints back out and have been doodling up some doggies, and this coming week i hope to further develop those so i can finally pull together the dogs a - z that i set out to do at the beginning of the summer! and speaking of doggies, i've got some clay magnet commissions to work my way through – yippee! don't forget i'm available to take commissions, so if there's anything you'd like, do feel free to drop me an email :) i've also had a couple more ideas for clay jewellery i'd like to have a go at making, so i'm hoping to get around to having a go at those ideas, too. 

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saturday scribbles

so last week's saturday scribbles showed the beginnings of a commission i was working on, and this saturday i'm here to show you the finished designs! i was commissioned again by francesca from thefrancescadiaries to create a new blog header, button and youtube header for her, and although it's very different to my usual work, it was satisfying to come away from that for a little while and work on something a little bit more design based for a change, because, as we all know, i am a terrible designer. 

i had lots of fun drawing the different makeup bits and pieces, and am particularly happy with the patterns that i made using them – they just seemed to slot together so well! overall i'm pretty happy with the work i produced for her, but if i had to choose a favourite i think it'd be the youtube banner because i think the colour scheme works well and the composition ended up working pretty well in the end despite the awkward youtube header dimensions! 

if you'd like to see the designs up and running, you can visit francesca's blog and her youtube. 

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