What makes your heart sing?
Have you worked out what makes your heart sing yet? I actually think this is something that is probably continually evolving for most of us. It’s certainly changed throughout my life, but even changes a bit from day to day or different times of the day.
I think people who find this out early on and stick with the same thing through multiple decades are probably quite rare. (No empirical evidence of this, though; it’s purely based on my own ponderings, experience and chats with friends, so would love to know whether others agree!)
Some things have always called to me, though, and never stopped. Books and drawing of some kind or another are probably my forever things. I’d also probably say languages and travel, but I don’t think they’ve fully stuck throughout my life.
Most of my life, my career has been in books (though encompassing digital publishing of various kinds as time went on) and I love that my more recent illustration career has overlapped with the publishing world, because I don’t think I would ever want to leave books behind completely (though, obviously, I’m never going to stop reading them).
(SIDE NOTE to any art directors in the book publishing world – I think I’m about ready for another chunky book illustration project, so give me a shout if my style fits your requirements.)
Anyway, there’s a little Sunday introspection for you. I’d love to hear what you think. Do you have some forever things that have always called out to you? Do your passions change with the seasons or the decades? Have you been able to find a career in some aspect of what makes your heart sing?
PS You may have noticed there are three versions of this hand-drawn type piece. I’m making a point, now and then (not for EVERY illustration, as that could be a bit time-consuming), of rejigging an illustration into different formats, or planning out different formats from the start. I think this is something that’s quite useful for commercial illustration – for example, different formats for social media, a thumbnail format and a full-page format. So, if you’re commissioning me and this sounds helpful, do ask about getting an illustration in different formats.
Lifestyle illustrator: Hand-drawn type and drawing words
I have always loved decorative type – from delicate, swirling calligraphy, through neon bubble writing, spray-painted graffiti and colourful mixed-up fonts, to ornate chalkboard writing. And, my absolute favourite …
I absolutely love the loose, handwriting-style that I can get from a dip-pen or fountain pen – or, more often, my Apple pencil! I like mixing up lower-case and capitals, and throwing in some font-like letters here and there. (I do have to switch off the editor in me, because she can get a bit antsy when I go all out with mixing up lower- and upper-case.)
Hand-drawn type (mostly) on its own
I use hand-drawn type a lot. I use it on its own for positive, life-affirming messages …
… or shouty activism (yeah, I need to do a lot more of this one!) …
… or celebratory words …
Hand-drawn text within illustrations
I use it within illustrations a fair bit. On bottles and packaging or wall art …
… in the words for my alphabet series …
… as captions on individual spots …
… as text in speech or thought bubbles, or not …
… in illustrated recipes …
Hand-drawn type within patterns
I even use it in patterns sometimes!
Hand-drawn type on book covers
Oh, and of course for book covers.
Do you love
too?
What’s your favourite decorative type, illustrated words, hand-drawn text (…)? Leave a comment and tell us what you love about illustrative text. Or link to some of your own hand-drawn type, if you like!
If you’re looking to commission some hand-drawn type, do get in touch!
A Mini a Day: Week 1
So, this was the first week of doing my ‘A mini a day, a letter a day’ and it wasn’t a full week. I definitely enjoyed having a bit of a focus to my doodling and I think, though I still did my normal random (mostly floral!) doodles. I found myself being more drawn to the minis, rather than the letters, but I don’t want to drop the letters, because I do think I could use some improvement (or sophistication, perhaps!) in my hand-lettering. I didn’t really use the letters in any final designs/patterns, though. Maybe I need to wait until I’ve gathered together more of an alphabet.
Here are some of the doodles/sketches (on the first day, I had time to do a bit more, and was able to do some colour sketches, which I then used for the week’s colour palette):
Wednesday: Brollies and the Letter B
Thursday: Saxophones and the Letter X
Friday: Feathers and the Letter T
And the final designs I made last night.
The great thing here, is that I have lots of little icons that I can do stuff with at a later date, if I want to. I didn’t really do any digital icons this time, but I’d quite like to next week, if I can fit it in. I’d love to find a good vector app for my Surface (yes, I can use Illustrator on there, but I’m thinking a more basic app, maybe, for easy playing), so I can do a bit of digital icon creation on the train or sitting on the sofa or in the park… Then again, I do love sketching, so don’t want to let go of that.
Next week: Fruit
Next week, I want to go with a week-long theme, so that each day’s minis can be tied together a bit more and so that I can also have a word (or maybe even words!) at the end, to use in the designs. So, I’m going to go with FRUIT. It conveniently has five letters in it, one for each day (the weekend is for pulling together the minis) and I will do them in order. I want a warm and bright colour palette, so I’m going to go with yellow, orange and red fruit. I will pick one from this list each day:
- lemons
- oranges
- apples (red)
- strawberries
- raspberries
- bananas
- peaches
- pomegranates
- grapefruit
- pears (yellow)
- apricots
- persimmons
- guava
- cherries
- grapes (red)
Of course, next week is the start of a new MATS Bootcamp month, so I will also have a big mini to concentrate on for that. Going to make sure I do at least one page of mine for each day. (How convenient would it be if Lilla picked fruit for this month, though?)
If you’re joining in and have blogged about it (or instagrammed), leave a link here. I might even do a round-up post, if there’s enough of you! Thanks to Chiara and Sareka for joining in on Instagram! Do tag me on Instagram if you join in, so I can give you a shout out (and see what lovely stuff you’ve been drawing).