2024 so far: giving a talk about illustration as a career at a university, poster for a children’s theatre production of The Odyssey, and my second mural in Hong Kong :)
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“Sentimental items” – by Kat J. Weiss, and lol, I realised after the fact that this looks like an illustration about loneliness in marriage or divorce or something
The Five+ Stages of Grief when Losing Sentimental Items, followed by the weirdest Prophesy ever
At the end of August, I lost an earring. And people – I cried.
Stage one: Depression.
Turning my illustrations into GIFs (illustration process + intermediate Photoshop tutorial)
This is my first time animating my drawings beyond simply Lasso-tool-ing and pivoting a limb in a drawing, or making colours fade in/out. There was a lot of back and forth, making it hard to trace my steps, but I’ll try my best to give you as streamlined a version of the process as possible. I’m also going to focus my explanation mainly on one illustration, Mobilwende, but I will also sprinkle in some insights from the others I did (a total of three animated illustrations).
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Illustration for Spectre Journal, “Labor Noir” — Editorial Illustration process
I want to talk about how I created this illustration for the new issue of Spectre Journal; let’s jump right into it!
1 / It’s important to first know the specs. In this case it was a 8 x 10” full page illustration (300dpi, CMYK) with 0.125” bleed. The article talks about how the mafia and politicians oppressed and exploited waterfront workers, longshoremen, in 1930s Brooklyn. I had two weeks to finish the illustration. The art director was open to my ideas; I read the article a few times and highlighted some keys words and phrases in order to evoke some fitting imagery in my mind. I also collected many references photos of the subject matter and people mentioned in the article; I even watched some documentaries to get to know the mafioso (some of them are quite famous) and what life was life for longshoremen at the time.
2 / I sent two thumbnails to the art director. One was more detailed and narrative (1), showing the key “players” and events that the article deals with. The second was more metaphorical (2), showing the weight of exploitation “carried” by the worker. The art director went with the first idea (which is the one I also preferred), but asked if I could take out the three portraits in the centre of the image, and replace it with something less figurative, for example the scenery of the Brooklyn waterfront. This was a huge challenge for me, as suddenly, I was left with a big hole in my composition! But I agreed that the first draft was too busy, and I needed to challenge myself to bring more negative space and balance into the illustration (that this is something I need to work on in general).
3 / Amending the composition: I tried two different things here. The first was to incorporate the waterfront and a bit of the Brooklyn bridge. I liked how it looked in the thumbnail (see: composited thumbnail), but somehow, when it came to drawing the final, it looked too stiff, too technical, which didn’t fit into the organic flow of the rest of the illustration. The second idea was to incorporate only the waterfront, and have the steam flowing out from the cargo ship mirrored as an abstract shape in right hand portion of the image (see: final drawing). In both cases, I drew the original parts of the first draft, and the “new parts” separately, then composited them in Photoshop (it’s helpful to work with a light tablet here). The figures in the bottom left were also composited, in part, because I ended moving them up, and an extension of their bodies needed to be attached.
4 / 5 / Final drawing: this was simply a matter of tracing over the composited thumbnail and all the amendments I had made, enlarged to the correct size. For the pose in the top left corner of the illustration, I had two friends pose as a reference for me. At the end, I chose to forgo the bridge, and the AD approved my final drawing.
6 / Final texture and colour: for texture, I used some marks I’ve made with different media (charcoal, watercolour, graphite) that I saved in a folder a while back. Not all, just a few! Through some serendipity while screen printing throughout the week, I discovered that the ink washed out from my screens left some pretty interesting ink splotches in the bottom of the tub; I photographed and used this for the water in my illustration (you can already see it in the “final drawing” above). I scrubbed the tub clean afterwards, of course!
I decided this year that I wanted to start incorporating more texture into my illustrations in order to add visual interest without spending too much time drawing detail by hand. For colour, I decided right from the beginning that I wanted to work with a limited palette: blue, grey, and some sepia and brown tones. I also knew that I wanted to have some elements in the image that were not lined — like some of the smoke and the “crowd” in the bottom right corner. This, again, for balance and visual interest. After shading, I added a layer of halftone to some parts of the illustration — it’s something I’ve been doing for a while now which I think adds a distinctive look to my work ;)
7 / The AD was happy with the result at the end, but just wanted to desaturate the blue a bit in order to give the illustration more of a “noir” feel. Here’s the final spread, courtesy of AD Gabe Berlin:
2022 recap: “bad” year for freelancing, good year for life
Compared to 2021, I wasn’t very busy with client projects this year. On the one hand, it felt a little unsettling, but on the other hand, I know from shared and conventional wisdom 😉 that most businesses, freelance or not, go through their ups and down.
To recap, here’s what I worked on in 2023:
For most of the year, May - October(!) I worked on this Sex Education Brochure for WienXtra, an Austrian organisation that, in cooperation with the city of Vienna, provides information, education, events, and leisure activities for children and young people. The reason this project took so long is not the amount of work I had, but rather, limited resources / man power on the client’s side – so everything was slower than I’m used to. I wish I had better prepared myself for this, but I enjoyed working on this project all the same.
This chapter of the brochure talks about consent.
So, because of this, I had more time to work on personal projects, for example this “Raclette” piece, which I finished in October:
In November - December, I exhibited the above piece, along with some others, in the St. Gangolf church, Trier. 50 artists were invited to take part in the exhibition, Inspiration: St. Gangolf, to celebrate the reopening and renovation of the church (you’ll see in the pictures that Jesus himself was still going through… his face lift 😉). I actually ended up selling one of my pieces, “Hot pot” – which was a rewarding, but also kind of sad?! It felt weird to say good bye to a piece which I had worked many hours on; like saying good bye to a part of myself. But I feel reassured that it’s staying in a nice new home now!
Video of the illustrations in St. Gangolf church, Trier, and Jesus under construction lol
Side note – I hope you don’t mind me pitching myself – most of my works are available, on demand, as prints! Yes, even the sold works. All you have to do is ask about the artwork you are interested in, and I’ll give you a size and price from there.
The last official project I worked on this year was typesetting for this photo book: Transatlantic by Tom Klein (a photographer and fellow creative of ours in Trier).
Why 2022 was this a good year “for life”
I suppose you can guess: I had more time to pursue personal goals. For example, I did a 30 day Cantonese learning challenge, followed by a 30 day reading challenge, followed/paralleled by a 30 day yoga challenge.
What I learnt from all of these challenges is that it takes small, but consistent steps to keep yourself going. Even on my worst day, what is the smallest thing I can do to keep X habit going? And I think that helped me a lot.
I also realised that I love learning languages, not just Cantonese – so this year I’m adding Thai, Ukrainian and French to the list – but keeping it small and manageable, of course!
Final Reflections: no art on a dying planet
As the year came to a close, I realised that there is much more I would like to do in terms of climate activism. We are moving much too slow in terms of reducing C02 emissions, transitioning to renewables and public mobility, and ultimately avoiding climate tipping points. Huge props to fellow illustrator Holly Exley for her tireless activism + sacrifice, and confronting her audience with this issue.
The next step for me is to attend the big demonstration in Lützerath on the 14.01.23 – this German village will be destroyed and dug up to make way for a new coal mine – which will ultimately stray us far, far away from the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5°C (as laid out in the 2015 Paris agreement). Activists are trying to prevent this from happening.
The science and facts are clear. So, my question to you: if you are not (or cannot be) on the streets, what will YOU do to help mitigate this disaster? Are we going to keep applauding from the sidelines, waiting for young people to fix this?
Finally finished this piece + does “correct perspective” make good art?
FKA the piece I never thought I’d finish because I didn’t like it, but – I recently got round to it because my agency was asking for “space themed” illustrations, so that gave me a lil kick in the butt. Sometimes in life you just gotta finish things you don’t enjoy. I look at it now and think “ok, this and this part* could’ve been better, but people seem to like it anyway and at least I finished it!” Yeah that’s all.
Space Café, July 2021
* If you’re curious about what in particular I’m not happy with in this piece it’s: a) the skater’s right arm b) the seated woman in the front/right – her right arm, too c) then in general the sense of depth in this environment, I’m not sure if I nailed it; perspective is not one of my strongest suit but I’m trying to improve it.
On the other hand, I can also make peace with the fact that, in general, a more symbolic perspective is more important to me than realistic perspective, ie it’s more important to me to sacrifice correct perspective in order to show certain details. I feel like if I were to show everything in 100% correct perspective, certain aspects, like a person’s outfit, or the contents of a table, might get lost. I hope that makes sense?!
If we look traditional Thai (temple) mural paintings for instance, a lot of it is completely flat! It’s definitely not true to life, but there’s a charm to this kind of representation, because it tells a story. It literally gives us a full(er) picture of the environment and what is happening in it.
I’m definitely not knocking people trying to master 3-point perspective, OK. I just think there are different ways to art good, and that’s all.
New! Euro Football Championships Illustration
Euro Football Championships
June 2021
Mixed media / digital
I wish there was a better way to name this piece but… ah well.
Football is silly, hysterical, emotional, asinine, divine… I wanted to capture all of those emotions in this piece, while also creating a sense of togetherness (as usual). I really had fun with this!
I would say that it usually takes me about 2 weeks to finish a piece like this – as I am obsessed with detail – but since I only had a week for this one, time management was definitely in order. So I followed… my own advice, specifically some of the points I covered in my “How I finished 33 Illustrations in 12 Days” blog post, which you can now watch in a snappier, summarised audio-visual format (video)!
My FFP2 Mask Designs have DROPPED!
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to work with a Hong Kong-based company that prints beautiful designs on surgical masks, as well as Korean-style FFP2 masks. As part of the collaboration, I developed a food-themed series. My statement on the piece:
The idea behind this series was to combine people + food in a playful and surreal way. Food is not only nourishment in itself, but also nourishment of the soul, and plays a big part in our emotions, memories, and sense of belonging – this is a celebration of that.
You can check them out – and/or buy them ;) – here.
If you want to see a video/reel of my modelling the designs, check out my post on Instagram!
How I finished 33 illustrations in 12 days (advice for tight deadlines / quick turnaround times)
Because it was such an intense process, I feel like I was thrown into a pressure cooker and came out a more knowledgeable and experienced artist – so much so that I would like to share everything I’ve learnt!
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