Going digital

I would definitely say I'm more of a traditional illustrator in terms of mediums and techniques I use. I LOVE the hand drawn and rendered, and hand crafted things really adds a special unique touch that I really strive for: It's just so much more personal, and also I believe people enjoy it more too.

So! During the current narrative unit at uni, we were encouraged to GO DIGITAL!  and were given loads of workshops around new and intimidating software and techniques. 

Despite my initial skepticism however, it really opened out some new options into my way of working...

~ click on image for more! ~

From the last unit, I was encouraged to explore techniques that quicken and ease my pace of working. With this in mind, I tried to run with the digital. One particular workshop we were given used pixels in Photoshop... What a fab way of quickly building a rough idea with block colour! A lot of the time I can envisage a image or sequence but struggle to put it into something physical and tactile; that annoying "wall" comes up when i open my sketchbook: I needed something creative and experimental! Along came pixels and I could quickly block out what I could see in my mind!

This continued and helped me to develop to rough sketches by hand in sketchbook. I soon discovered however I really want to keep that natural pencil sketchy-ness that comes with crayons and pencils and your own hand. After grabbing a quick session with our departments amazing technicians, I was away on the graphics tablet - again, another thing that terrified me and never thought i'd use. Well I now own my own, just a couple days later.

And hey presto! - I found some online workshops and tips and got going with creating my own brushes and really using my tablet like my book. What this space!! ​​

~ pinterest helped too; keeping all my visual thoughts in tack, as well as instagram! ~