illustration

Acrylics painting Process

A week ago I took some time to paint with acrylics and I have to say it’s a whole different experience than painting digitally. While working on “Coming Home” I developed a somehow stronger relationship to the piece than I would with a fully digital one. The finished artwork is a physically existing original. It was a lot of fun to paint!

But enough talk. Time for you to see some steps in the creation process of “Coming Home”, an illustration for a teenager’s horror anthology project at university.

Just click on any image to open the images in the lightbox:

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

The new semester!

It’s decided! I’ll be concentrating on 3D and storybook illustrations this semester.

The 3D seminar:

This seminar is focusing on the basics of working with 3D applications. This includes planning, modeling, texturing, lighting, animating and rendering the three-dimensional objects. This semester’s main topic is Sci-Fi… I couldn’t resist! So except for all the technical aspects we also read books (Stanislav Lem – “The Futurological Congress“, Asimov’s robot stories and Strugatzky’s “Roadside Picnic“) and analyze movies of the sci-fi genre. For now we haven’t created anything too exciting, but we only had a 4 or 5 meetings. I uploaded 2 picas I did as homework so far (I’m still very new to 3D modeling though so don’t expect too much):

The storybook illustration seminar:

In this seminar we are working on a real to-be-published adolescent’s horror-storybook. Logically we have to stick to the page format and other rules (all illustrations have to be in grayscale for example). At the end of the semester the publisher’s editors will pick the illustrations they see fit in their concept. I’ll be experimenting again 😀 And again I’ll give you a few examples of what I have painted so far:

Well that’s it for now. I’ll be uploading more later on 😉

in 3D / Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Magazine Layouts

I did some graphic design work for college 🙂 The first two examples are simply practice for A3 magazine facing pages. The third one is the cover (left page = back, right page = front) for a magazine I designed for the course. It got printed and was part of the final exam for the 4th semester (non-commercial and for personal use only). I won’t upload the whole issue because of the personal data it includes.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

“Fairy-Tale-Worlds” – Some Paintings and Drafts

All creature concepts are very rough (but I kind of like that about them). By the way, *Chann* is my favorite 🙂 There’s a reason for the name but it’s hard to explain with text only. Let’s just say it’s a sound it makes *chann*

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Exams are over!

Three days ago I had my last exam! We had to present everything we did during the last semester and the presentation was extremely important itself by the way! We had ONLY 10-15 mins. I had my brand new laser-pointer so I was happy no matter what 🙂

Here’s the short summary PART I

Illustration Basics (reminder) (grade 1,3  / A):

If you’re interested you can find the rest of the characters for the Character Design task here.
Well I didn’t upload all of my work but I think you get the idea for the Illustration Basics classes: a lot of variety!

In my next posts I’ll sum up the rest of the semester for you 🙂

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments

Illustration Training x 3 with Composition Collages

Perhaps some of you remember my older post about training composing your images with the “compo-game”. Well I have to admit it can get boring after a while, so here’s an alternative from which your skills can profit double!

The next time you paint something simply scan it (or take a picture and print it out, if you don’t have access to a scanner). Now open it with any program that can process images and zoom in (you could use a magnifying glass for the printed pic, I guess). Now scroll around and search for interesting parts. If something catches your eye don’t hesitate and copy just what you see on the monitor in that very moment (the zoomed-in part). Gather all parts in a different file and when you feel like there’s nothing more to add start freely moving them around. Your aim is to create a good balance between the parts themselves AND in regard to the negative space.

Here’s an example:

At the end of the day you’ve created a painting, used it as a basis for a second image and you improved your composing skills. WIN! WIN! WIN!

in Illustration / Tips and More  by Savina 0 comments

Summary: This Semester’s Classes

Finally I feel like I can take some time for updating my blog!

I decided to focus on illustration and theory for this (3rd) semester and since I’m still rather slow when it comes to effective drawing I had the busiest four months of my life so far! Lucky for me I got used to sleeping less than 6 hours a night during the week (with an occasional all-nighter now and then). But I guess that’s normal for this branch…

But let’s skip to the classes:

  • Illustration Basics: Every week you get a new assignment covering everything from cover illustrations for books and magazines, posters, comic, storyboarding etc. NEW: For the first time the students have to commit to a bigger project during the last 1,5 months of the semester. One has to choose from 24 scientific topics and create so called “scientific illustrations” explaining the subject. I picked “white”, covering colors and light on a physical and physiological basis.
  • Illustration Techniques: This is where the students are introduced to a variety of different painting techniques. This semester’s choice is: Watercolors, acrylics, digital painting, vector graphics. I especially enjoy this seminar 🙂
  • Illustrator’s Survival Kit (optional): Very time-consuming but effective class! Mainly we are working on visual storytelling and character design. At the beginning of class everyone presents his homework to the other students and the prof (sometimes even in front of a recording camera) after which he/she gets a profound constructive criticism. Then follows a theory presentation followed by a practical working phase. Additionally workshops are provided on a regular basis.
  • Research (optional): Here’s where the students (not only illustrators) can learn research techniques including market research, book research and deep space. After an intensive theoretical phase every student has to do a profound research on a chosen design-relevant topic.
  • Extra lectures: Every student needs at least 2 extra (one-time) lectures in order to qualify for a theory class exam (in my case that’s “Research”).

During the Christmas “brake” we have to improve ALL of the homework assignments so far + the new assignments 🙁 At the end of the semester we are going to present all of our work for the last months in all the classes.

in Illustration / Personal  by Savina 0 comments

First Drawing Class Assignments (Prospective Illustrators) 2.Semester

In the Drawing Class for prospective illustrators we already completed the first two homework assignments:

  • Character Design: Draw three of your co-students and create their characters (including your own).
  • Concept Art: Everyone received a small sketch book (40 pages) which had to be filled with sketches from “a forgotten valley in south-east Russia on the border to Mongolia”. We were encouraged to think of unique animals/plants/architecture. In short: Draw whatever we want 🙂

As usual every drawing material and technique was allowed but since I’m a pencil junkie I stuck to clear forms throughout the whole sketching book task. I still haven’t quite finished the first task ^^;

The valley panorama at the beginning.

The grotesque but gentle monster.

The mysterious sign.

The exploding mist-insects.

The bizarre drumming fiend.

The He-Sirens XD

These are just a few excerpts. We were given two weeks for the forty pages. Oh, and did I mention there’s supposed to be some kind of a story 😀 I made a tiny story-board for that purpose (the reserved space for one page is about 2×3 cm + text descriptions on the sides).

Our next task is about painting landscapes…Preferably from Mongolia but the professor told us it’s ok to draw whatever landscapes we choose. He wants to see some images we “drew with all our heart”.

in Illustration  by Savina 0 comments