Lilla Rogers: Bootcamp | cuckoo assignment

Consider me a soldier in Lilla Rogers Make Art That Sells: Assignment Bootcamp. Lilla’s book  I Just Like to Make Things: Learn the Secrets to Making Money while Staying Passionate about your Art and Craft has lots of very helpful and inspiring info. Her e-course MATS Make Art That Sells looks AMAZING, but I could not justify the cost. Not sure I if I would be able commit to it, while stressing over the cost. Bootcamp seemed perfect for me! It is spread over 6 months, so I can wait till the last minute if I need to, or I can diligently be working on it throughout the month. And it’s affordable for me.

For February, Cuckoo clocks were the inspiration. iPhone case, was the assignment. On the first day BOOTCAMP went live, I read about the inspiration. All month long I would think about it, but I was SO busy creating things for photoDUDS, there was no time to do any cuckoo creating.

The facebook group page scared me, because this was my first time doing something like this. I wanted to stay true to myself and not “do what everybody else was doing”. Self doubt was not going to stop me.

On Saturday, I blocked out some time and finally read about the assignment. Doesn’t it figure! The assignment was DUE in a few hours. Even though I’m not much of a sketcher, but I forced myself. My mind is ALWAYS thinking and seeing designs ALL of the time. It won’t stop! I pencil sketched various thoughts I had throughout the month.

dinnys garden cuckoo sketch

dinnys garden cuckoo sketch

Ink drawings and watercolors, that’s what I’ll do! However, I had too much DUDS stuff on my table to move, so off to the computer…

Color schemes are where I typically start. The inspiration image came from one of Lilla’s bootcamp posts. When creating a color scheme, I use Photoshop’s COLOR PICKER to select colors from my image,  and dump the colors into lots of  boxes. NOTE: Do this on a layer ABOVE the inspiration image, so it’s easier to adjust the colors to my liking. Even after doing this, the colors will get tweaked while working on a project.

140225_west-elm-colors

In Adobe Illustrator, I started to draw the basic shapes, starting with the roof. While drawing in Illustrator, I have learned to save everything in bits, because you will always want to go back and change things later. My Illustrator desktop tends to look like this.

Illustrator desktop | cuckoo

Illustrator desktop | cuckoo

I’m an old school Illustrator user, since it was first developed in 1988 – they used to name the software by year back then. There are probably ways to do this better or more efficiently, but it’s what I’m used to and that works for me. The dot pattern to the clock body bothered my how the dots lined up or rather didn’t line up nicely, so it was edited out. Patterned papers were designed, but they didn’t thrill me.

The illustration was intended for use on an iPhone. Since the image would end up around 2″ wide, I didn’t want the details to get lost, so it remained simple.

Here’s my submission:

140223_dinnys_Cuckoo_iPhone

 

It made me smile and my daughter like it. I’m not sure my style is fitting in with the other artist type of work, but I need to be true to myself. After submitting, I wish I had made some changes {of course}! These designs may get worked into a few more options, but not sure. That all depends on what the next assignment is.

 

How I use watercolors in my digital designs.

I like to incorporate real watercolors into my digital designs. It gets me away from the computer {for a short time} AND I can get messy. My initial inspiration for this product was a repeating triangular shape. I didn’t have any real color scheme in mind because I figured I could make it whatever colors I wanted later in Photoshop.

140223_watercolor011

I drew a hexagonal shape with pencil on my watercolor paper and started painting. I couldn’t let that extra space go to waste, so I drew parallel lines on and figured I could fit a few  smaller triangles. What was I thinking, I could totally be more efficient in my use of space! So I did a little math and tried this.

140223_watercolor003

I really liked the direction this was going. But, I could get MORE triangles from a sheet of paper if they were smaller. So I did these.

140223_watercolor001

I really started to like the colors. I did a few more sheets of triangles, in similar colors. Some of the triangle I did not like – but that’s what Photoshop is for. I erased the pencil lines before scanning. Here is the photoDUDS card I created with these watercolor triangles. I removed some of the triangles with a mask in Photoshop.

140223_Mosaic_triangles

photos: Beth Forester Photography

MOSAIC, senior grad cards will be available in the photoDUDS store on Thursday. There are 8 different designs in the set, all with similar water color designs. I also painted some squares.