Dragon logo design process

I've got a fun project to share today! A few months ago, Sarah, one of the girls from my Bible study, asked me to design a logo for her and her fiance. He roasts his own coffee and she really wanted a logo of a dragon roasting a coffee bean to put on the bags of coffee he gives people. Even though logos and graphic designs are really not my specialty, the project sounded so fun that I figured I'd give it a try. Fast forward to this week, when I finally finished up the project and sent Sarah the completed logo. I'm super happy with how it turned out and wanted to share the design process here. Make yourself a cup of tea and get comfy, because this post is loooong!

Pretty much all projects start at the same place, the scrappy, terrible idea place. Trying to visualize what a dragon roasting a coffee bean actually looked like was daunting and it took me a good 10 pages to come up with a decent solution. Here are some early, horrible attempts.

I arrived at this design, which I really liked, but decided to press on and see if anything better came along. Many pages later, I had three ideas that seemed pretty good. I sent them to Sarah to see which one she liked best.

She picked A, which also happened to be my favorite. Once I had the over all direction figured out, I needed to refine the idea into a solid, well thought out concept. That took more paper.....

Finally ended up here. I added a pile of "hoarded" coffee beans for the dragon to sit on. I scanned this sketch into Photoshop and made a color blocked version.

I experimented with font placement and then asked Sarah what she wanted. She opted for the text above.

At this point, I was still really struggling to make the pile of coffee beans look like a pile of coffee beans and not just a random pile of ovals. I took the problem to my friend Nicole, who works with graphic design stuff. She very wisely suggested making the pile of coffee beans a more contained, distinct shape, rather than having it bleed off the image. The idea perfectly solved my problem! :-D I tweaked the design and ended up with this.

I knew at this point, I was pretty much ready to start the final rendering. Sarah suggested a few more changes, then I printed out the rough comp, traced and inked it on a new piece of paper.

I scanned the drawing into Photoshop, filled in the areas that need to be black, made a few minor adjustments and declared the project done!

Over all, I'm very satisfied with how it looks and Sarah loved it! ^_^ 

Anyway, thanks for sticking through to the end of this post and letting me share the project process with you!

onward and upward,

Bethany

On Frustration and Moth Princesses

Ever had a project where you thought "This'll be easy! I've done this a bunch of times before." and then it turns to be frustrating and stupid and you want to scrap the whole idea? Well, that was this week's illustration. I wanted to do a colored version of the Moth Princess from a few weeks ago and I figured it would be a reasonably quick and easy project. After all, I colored all those other Inktober drawings, this should be cake, right? Wrong! 

I spent some of Monday and a good chunk of Wednesday working on Moth Princess and she ended up looking like this.

Something felt off to me. The colors weren't working right and I had tried them really muted and really intense. Super annoying! So, after taking a break, I tried swapping out some colors till I got to this point.

This one feels a lot better, but I'm still not totally sold on it. I may need to take a break and try a third version. Or I may decide it isn't worth it and move on to something else.

Sometimes, projects don't turn out the way you'd hoped. Sometimes, you get so frustrated you just want to chuck the whole thing and never try that medium again ever! And you can do that, although it might not be the best choice in the long run. If you do stick with it, you have to decide whether to keep working on that project till you're satisfied, or call it close enough and move on to the next thing. Neither way is 100% correct all of the time and it take a while to figure out which approach to take when. This time, I'm choosing to move on. Next time, I might keep working till I'm satisfied. But either way, the important this is to keep moving forward.

onward and upward,

Bethany

Rink Rat

Here's the final digitally colored Inktober drawing! This has been a really neat little side project; it's always cool to see how color and value can really bring an ink drawing to life! 

Art aside, life has reached an all time high of chaos and craziness because Jon and I are preparing to move into our new house this Saturday!! :-D I'm really looking forward to unpacking and getting settled into our new space! ^_^ And don't worry, I'll still be showing up every Thursday with something to share here, despite the city of boxes that is my life right now (so many boxes...).

onward and upward,

Bethany

Fancy Lizard Lady

Back to more colored Inktober drawings. Hopefully you guys aren't sick of them by now! I only have one more I was planning to do, then I'll move on to other things. Also, working with red as a dominate color is tough. It's so powerful that it's hard to find other colors to play off of it. But all in all, I think this one turned out ok.

onward and upward,

Bethany

Swan Song

Interestingly enough, I started on this Inktober before any of the others and didn't really get it finished till this week. The lighting was really tough to figure out. It's done now though, and I really love the sense of drama the piece has! Strong contrasts are great at creating an impact. 

onward and upward,

Bethany

Afghan Hound Girl

Another colored Inktober drawing. Or, maybe I should say semi-colored. This one ended up being more limited than I'd initially planned. I was really struggling to find the right color pallet, and eventually used Vermeer's "Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window" as inspiration.

onward and upward,

Bethany

Warrior Salmon

More colored Inktober drawings! I really like how this one turned out, especially the atmospheric qualities. 

onward and upward,

Bethany

The Herbalist

I'm finally getting around to adding color to some of my Inktober characters from last year!! Woot, woot!! :-D I love how alive they become with a little bit of tone, lighting, and shadow. Hopefully there will be a few more of these in the near future!

Onward and upward,

Bethany

100 in 10 challenge: Landscapes and Lighting

Over the past few weeks, I participated in a 100 in 10 challenge through one of the forums at the Oatley Academy. (I mentioned them last week, they're awesome!) The idea is to draw 100 of something over the course of 10 days in order to get better at it. I chose to do 50 landscapes and 50 lighting scenarios in small, medium, and large sizes. It was a pretty grueling challenge, even though I ended up taking the weekends off for a break. Last Friday was my final day, so I thought I'd share some of the less terrible studies here. 

My biggest area of growth in this project was becoming less afraid of tackling challenging landscape or lighting set ups. My confidence grew a little as I learned how to break down an image and "reassemble it" in a comprehensible way in my studies. I wouldn't say I'm the greatest at either landscapes or lighting, but I am a little less intimidated at the thought of drawing them.

onward and up ward,

Bethany

Space Fairies

I had Ok Go's latest song/video stuck in my head and I doodled my way to the concept of Space Fairies. I dunno, I'm a little odd sometimes. Anyway, I wasn't sure how I felt about the final result at first, but now I think it's ok. Maybe if I feel inspired to draw more Space Fairies sometime, I'll develop the idea a bit more. 

onward and upward,

Bethany

Christmas Illustration '15

Very excited to share my Christmas illustration with you guys!! ^_^ I've been working on it for the better part of the month and it has definitely gone through all the usual art project phases, from "yes, this thing is going to look awesome!" to the "oh no, I totally ruined it!" Over all, I think it turned out really well and I like that it has the Christmas vibe without being too obvious. And who doesn't like a group of forest creatures hanging out with their yeti friend around the fire at night?

Anyway, this is my last blog post for the year. I'll be taking Christmas and New Year's off and starting up again on January 7th with an important art announcement for 2016, so stay tuned for that! I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, New Year's, holiday season, etc!

onward and upward,

Bethany

Character design exercise: Adventurers

In an effort to improve my character design skills (and because I needed something to blog about this week), I gave myself the assignment of creating a few Adventurers. I was actually planning on posting one half of this project today and the other half later this month, but it gained so much momentum yesterday that I ended up finishing the whole thing. Yay, momentum! For this project, I wanted to keep things loose and not get fussy or over polished. Over all, I'm happy with the end results, although I feel like my "final drawings" have less gesture and structure than my initial thumbnails, which I've also included. 

onward and upward,

Bethany

Digital painting experiments

A few quick digital paintings I did on my new Cintiq, which is awesome!! I kind of wish the values were a little stronger on the pink and blue reading girl, but I can always try another version later. Also, I've noticed I lean toward blue backgrounds when I work digitally, so it would be good to get out of the box a little in that area, too. 

I'm planning on doing a few more paintings over the coming months to get used to the technology, so stay tuned!

onward and upward,

Bethany

Little Red Riding Hood comic!!

As some of you may know, one of my artistic goals is to be able to draw comics. Up to till now though, the whole process of telling stories sequentially has been super intimidating to me; I kept worrying about doing things "the wrong way". In order to get out of my comfort zone and into this unfamiliar territory, I took a stab at rendering the story of Little Red Riding Hood in comic form. Honestly, this project is pretty rough; the drawings are simple doodles and I'm sure I made a million mistakes in the formatting. (I'm not even sure if it's large enough to be read!) But it's an actual comic and I learned a lot from it, which is what counts. So here you have it, my first humble attempt at the art of telling stories with lots of tiny pictures, and my first small step towards getting better at something new.    

onward and upward,

Bethany

More Fae portraits

Sorry this post is a little late; there was much shoveling of snow today. O.o Anyway, I took the fox fae girl sketch from a few weeks ago and painted it in Photoshop. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. In fact, it might be the best thing I've painted in Photoshop up to this point! 

After fox girl turned out so well, I decided to try a deer fae portrait. That turned out to be more complicated than I anticipated. I drew the first version, tried painting it in Photoshop, hated it and scrapped the picture. I drew the second version, tried to paint it in Photoshop, hated how the painting looked, and scrapped that picture too. I was going to repaint it a third time, but the week got too busy, so I'm just going to post the sketch with and an "I.O.U a proper paint job" note along with it. Also, my deer fae person is a little more gender neutral than I'd intended. I was trying to make it a guy, but the features didn't come out masculine enough. I still think it's a good portrait, though; much better than my first one.

onward and upward,

Bethany

Clyde the deer janitor

Guys, I am so super happy with how this piece turned out!!! It was one of those rare, glorious moments when everything came together to create exactly the kind of mood I was aiming for! ^_^ 

Back story time: The idea for this image started with a Facebook post my cousin Meredith wrote about "the enigmatic janitor Clyde" at her place of employment. It got me wondering about janitors and their sometimes mysterious natures. Which, in turn, sparked the thought, "Well, what if he's a deer and he doesn't want anyone to find out, so he works as a night shift janitor, where very few people will ever see him." The concept just sounded so cool that I had to draw it. 

As I mentioned earlier, one of my favorite things about this piece is the mood. It's like a scene that you've happened upon late at night when the florescent lights are stark, and everything feel surreal and otherworldly. The next morning, in the rational light of day, the idea of a graveyard shift deer janitor seems impossible and you doubt what you thought you saw, but at the time, it seemed plausible because you were tired and just accepted what was there without question. 

onward and upward,

Bethany

November '14 Skill Building: Lighting

Lighting is one of those things that always baffles me when it comes to art. I think it has something to do with being consistent about your light source and shadows. So, in order to debunk my light rendering fears, I did a few thumbnail studies of some photos with interesting lighting set ups. For tiny, fast paced studies, I think they turned out well and I'm already feeling less intimidated about rendering light. Goal achieved!!

onward and upward,

Beth

Crystal Fairy

A few weeks ago, I thought it would be cool to design a cave-dwelling fairy whose body was made of crystal. I did a rough doodle, then set it aside till last week, when I realized I needed a new project to blog about. I thought to myself "Hey, this looks like a nice, simple, straightforward character I can pull together by Thursday." 

Well, it turns out I was grievously deceived on the "simple" part. I was so ready to be done with this project yesterday and I hadn't even started adding any color in Photoshop yet. However, it's finished now, for better or worse, and it's still Thursday. So, here is my Crystal Fairy, in all her complicated glory. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to crash on the couch and do nothing for awhile.

sincerely,

Beth

Sloth yoga

It's doesn't get much more ridiculous than sloths doing yoga. Enjoy! ^_^

sincerely,

Beth

Bonus blog post: Woodland Dinner party Illustration is Done!!

So, remember how yesterday I was all "So busy; nothing to show for it. blah, blah, blah"? Well, I (finally) finished an illustration assignment for an online class I've been taking! This thing has been brainstormed, rendered, re-thought, re-rendered, over complicated, and re-simplified for two months and now it's finally DONE. On Saturday night, I'll hear what the instructor has to say about it, but for now, I'm just pleased with how it turned out and that it turned out at all!

Here's the text that this scene is illustrating:

Mrs. Pepper was so excited to see all of her friends arriving to her dinner party! They brought garden delights and roasted entrees, cider and milk and sweet smelling treats by the dozen. Everyone was happy and excited to enjoy a hearty meal except for Simon, who never received his invitation.

I wish I could make the image bigger, but then it would run into the stuff on the side of my blog page. That will be something to change in the upcoming blog reboot I have planned. 

sincerely,

Bethany