Inktober: AInktober

Not content with doing one set of Inktober illustrations, I decided to also participate in AInktober, for which Janelle Shane used artificial intelligence to come up with lists of prompts for the month.

This was an amazing challenge! The prompts were so out-there that I really had to think hard about what to draw for each of them. I really feel that after this I could draw anything!

The best thing was seeing what other people had come up with for the same prompts each day. My favourites to draw were It really ate him, ornery beach sheep, and scarfed mystery.

I was also lucky enough to win a copy of Janelle's book for one of my drawings, 2 blocks squishy, and I look forward to reading that when it arrives!

Amélie digital illustrations

After seeing Amélie the Musical, and rewatching the film (with only the French subtitles!), I was really in the mood to create some Amélie inspired art. I'd also just finished my 100 day project, in which I'd used a template to create various characters, including Amélie, so I decided to start a new project drawing Amélie's outfits.

I adjusted my template a bit, to make it more elegant, added the face, and perfected the hairstyle. I then drew together some colour palette ideas, then began to draw the outfits.

I'm really pleased with how these illustrations have turned out, and I went on to do an Inktober drawing project inspired by them, which I'll tell you more about soon.

Drawing all the outfits is going to be an ongoing project, as there are quite a few fron the film that I haven't done yet, and I'd like to draw those from the various versions of the musical and some of my own devising too!

Logo design

I've recently been working on a new logo design for St Ninian's Charity Shop and Café, to use on our social media and printed paperwork. I based it on the idea that the shop and café are at the heart of the community, so I made it a heart shape. I chose blue because it is a colour that appears in our shop sign and the mural on our shutters.

I started with a sketch:

Tried making a version in illustrator:

But felt it would be better with the variation of stroke width possible by using the calligraphic brushes available on the iPad:

I used an online converter to make this into a shape I could import into illustrator:

After which I tidied up the curves a bit.

The other trustees wondered if we could combine it with the existing logo which was text in an oval, so I swapped the colours making the logo white and the background blue. We are still to decide on the exact wording for the logo, but here's how it will work with text on it.

And in a circle as our social media avatar:

The Simple Things patch design competition

The patch I got free with The Simple Things magazine was the beginning of a collection, so when they held a competition to design one I had to get involved! In the end I didn't win, but I had a lot of fun creating my design.

The patch was to be on a theme of giving. Coming up with my design was a bit of a brainstorming process, looking at images online on that theme, doing some doodles, and coming up with a final idea. Once I had my idea, I used Adobe Illustrator to create the design. I scanned in one of the existing patches so that I could get the proportions right, and used the logo at the bottom from the scan. I tried to keep the shapes fairly bold, so that they would work well in an embroidered design.

Using colours that worked well with the other patches was important to me, so I picked some of the colours that were used in the other patches, then used a few other colours that matched well with them.

The wording at the top was the most difficult bit. I knew that I wanted it to be two or three words like the other patches, so I didn't want it to simply say "Give". It took a lot of brainstorming, with an online thesaurus and the help of a friend, and coming up with ideas that veered from cheesy to sweary, before I came up with the very simple idea of "Be generous". It was frustrating that I couldn't find an exact match for the font, so I just used the best match that I could find.

Although I didn't win the competition, I absolutely loved the winning design by Lauren Bowers, and can't wait to get the patch. There were over 100 entries to the competition, and some were picked to appear in the magazine - including mine! 

So I think I can say that I came in the top 20! It was really interesting to see how everyone had interpreted the idea, and to see the different styles of illustration. I think my favourite of the other designs was the one with the watering can by Amy Hampshire which I think would have worked really well as a patch and had colours that worked well with the other patches.

Designing a Japanese-style souvenir stamp

When Marceline showed off some of the souvenir stamp designs she’d gathered on her recent holiday to Japan, I had the bright idea that we could design them for our own towns! Marceline has set this up as a little summer challenge, so if you design your own, post it to Instagram with the hashtag #mysouvenirstamp and tag @marcelinesmith.

Often known as eki stamps, or station stamps, these rubber stamps are found not just at train stations but at all sorts of tourist attractions, temples, etc. Collecting them is a fun way to commemorate your visits to various places. On my first trip to Japan, I only got one, at Mount Fuji, but on my second trip I carried my travel journal with me and sought the stamps out where ever I went!

I found designing these stamps a very similar process to that of designing my personalised Japanese crest – thinking of items to sum up a person or place, my home town in this case, and fitting them into a circular design.

Not all souvenir stamps are circular, of course. They can be square, rectangular, octagonal, or other shapes. But the circle is one of my favourite shapes for them, and it’s quite appropriate for my home town of Glenrothes which is famous for its roundabouts!

I started with some sketches to put my ideas together. Glenrothes is also famous for its town art. There are sculptures throughout the town, and some of the best-known ones are the hippos, mushrooms, and irises, so I wanted to use these in my design. I also wanted to add a kawaii element to go with the Japanese inspiration, so I decided my mushroom and hippo would have cute faces.

I used a couple of stencils to draw concentric circles, and then drew my ideas inside them in pencil. When I’d done that I went over them in pen, and decided which of them I liked best. I discovered that I am not very good at drawing cute hippos! They often looked like some weird cow-horse-pig-moomin hybrid. Mind you, I was maybe not too far off with the Moomin resemblance, since Googling “cute Japanese hippo” gives images of Moomins!

I wanted some Japanese lettering on my stamp, and, not feeling confident about translating Glenrothes into katakana, I decided instead just to have the katakana for Scotland across the top.

I chose one of the drawings, but preferred the flower from another, so once I’d scanned them in I used Photoshop to combine them. I changed the colour, tidied up the drawing, and used the Stamp filter to give a smoother appearance to the lines. Then I added a layer on top where I used a brush to cover some areas with white. This gave a faded, dotty appearance to mimic the use of a real stamp.

I enjoyed the process so much that I went on to design more stamps representing the architecture, and town park!

I also experimented further in Photoshop by changing the colour of the stamps, and by making double-stamped images.

Why not join in the fun yourself, and design a stamp for your own town, a local tourist attraction, or somewhere else you like? You can draw it or try carving it from a stamp blog. Post your stamp on instagram with the hashtag #mysouvenirstamp and tag @marcelinesmith