26days of type - food lettering

36daysoftype has started 1 week ago and it has been a lot of fun.
And A LOT of work let me tell you.
It you search for the #36daysoftype hashtag on instagram you'll find a lot of great examples of how creative we can be having the same theme.
Keep up with my project here: instagram

I've been receiving a lot of feedback which has been great! I even got featured by type.gang!

26daysoffoodtype - the beginning

36daysoftype starts tomorrow!
Here's a sneak peak video of what you can expect from me (sorry if the image seems a bit wonky sometimes, I'm still figuring things out):

Flat lay photography - my new header

I don't know if you've noticed but I've been making some changes to the layout of the blog. One of the things that were bothering me the most was the header image. It's the first thing you see when you enter a blog, kind of the first impression the reader gets and mine wasn't making me happy at all!

With that in mind, I had this idea of making a new lettering piece (every excuse is a good one). The process of creating it is something I'll probably talk about in a different post as it's something I don't usually do as everything was made manually and I usually jump to the computer stage as soon as I can...

Nonetheless today I wanted to talk about the process of creating the image per se.

Idea

I knew I wanted to take a photo on my desk with a composition of elements that were simultaneously inspiring and useful. Well...not all elements are actually useful but they tell a bit more about me when you first enter the blog (that's why there's a children's book there which wouldn't usually be on my desk while I'm working on lettering but is such an important part of me that there was no way it wasn't going to be featured there. Choosing only one was obviously the problem...

Research

The objects that were going to appear in the image were decided but having google and pinterest as my best friends I decided it wouldn't hurt to see what others have been doing around the same subject. To my surprise, I discovered a world of articles about flat objects photography but they featured mainly beauty stuff

Composition

After laying the objects in an organized chaos, I started to take pictures. I suggest you take an experimental photo to get your composition right. Seeing your composition through the screen is completely different and helps you see if everything is well balanced.

An important tip is when you take some photos you think you're happy with, see them on the computer. 

For example, this is the first photo I took and I thought it was ok but when I saw on the computer I realized there was a stop of white space. With everything still in place, I was able to fix it. And I'm not even joking this was what editing looked like. Not comfortable but effective.

Light

I knew I was going to use natural light so I waited for the weekend to work on this as I come home after dark during week days.

My office is a great natural light during the afternoon but it starts to get direct sunlight around 4 pm and since I didn't want huge light contrasts I started photographing right after lunch.

Then It was just a matter of editing the image to soften the shadows and make the letting pop a bit more.

I quite like the final result and it is the first thing you see.

What do you think?

freebies: download november 2015 calendar

I just realized this morning that we're in november! That's weird especially because it'll be my birthday in two days!
Until a few hours ago I had nothing ready for this calendar, you know, the usual. But I knew it had to be either about my birthday or about my trip to Paris next week. I guess you can see what I ended up choosing.
Only one more calendar to go!

download: mobile pattern | desktop pattern

what goes around comes around

The other day I started thinking about karma and how I should remember it more often.

Then I felt like creating something related to it and this is what I came up with.

At first (as it always happens when I start creating something new) I thought it was a great ideia.

Then I thought this is probably not at all original, a lot of people must have done it before. When I get to this stage I usually give up and move on to something new and that's why I have A LOT of unfinished work, I always get unmotivated along the way.

This time I decided not to give up and this is the final product, quite different from what you usually see from me but I kinda like it.

Have a great week!

Love Letters from Somebodyelsa - the process

If you follow me on instragram or facebook you already know about this project of mine where I created an alphabet. To finish it I decided to film a video showing the creative process I usually went through. I really like watching these kind of videos so hopefully you'll like it too.
This was the first video of this kind that I created and I must tell you, it didn't go smoothly.

First I made it with this really crappy camera with really crappy quality which I didn't realise until I watched it on the computer. The quality was so crappy I couldn't use it.

On to the second try. This time I used my phone, the quality was fine for what I needed but.... I ran out of space and only noticed it 30 minutes into editing.

Third time's the charm and this video came out. Except it was so big it took me a lot of time to edit it because my computer couldn't handle it.

October Calendar

Hello!

Finally a wallpaper that's not late! 

The lettering was created for a wedding invitation I did and I liked how it turned out so I just got it a bit more themed. The illustration itself was created on a plane back home from the UK, it's amazing how much I can get done when there are no distractions. Maybe I should travel a lot more, for the sake of my productivity of course.

Hopefully I'll update the blog before the next calendar.

Enjoy!

desktop | iphone | samsung galaxy s4

July Calendar

Hello there!

Just a quick post to share this months calendar. It was inspired by the hot july days but also by the days that were spent in Barcelona, where there was a lot of sun but less icecream than expected.
This month I did something I don't usually do: I created this illustration today, usually it takes me a little more time, two days at least, on and off, as I like to take my mind off it and come back later to see if I still like what I did.
But then I remembered why I started this project. It was to try different things and this month was different, so it's all good.

Hope you enjoy it

desktop | iphone | samsung galaxy s4

36 days of type

Hello there!

This is a post to tell you about a project I'm participating in. It's called 36 days of type and it's just what the title says, you're supposed to create a different letter (and after that, the numbers) every day.
I only heard about it the day it started and since one of my goals is to train my typography skills, this seemed like a good idea. Not so much when I think about all the actual work I have to finish but I'll keep doing it until I can't. This is supposed to be a very busy month, not the greatest time to start a new project but we'll see how it goes.

You may notice the D letter is missing, that's because I didn't like what I created, maybe I'll go back and redo it latter.

illustration process - Lowlve edition

I always love to see posts where other illustrators show the process they go through till they get to the finished product.

That's why I decided to document the - let's say - analogical - part of my last illustration mini series.

When I first started this "illustrator journey", three years ago, the first thing I drew were owls. It was part of a college work and it was because of those owls that my teacher told me I could invest in illustrations and I thought "well, maybe I can..."

Oddly enough, ever since then I never drew owls again. Until now.

I wanted to create something people would find lovely and yet fun. It had to be owls.

But in this illustrations the lettering was just as important as the illustration itself so I spent a lot of time trying to create something that I liked which was hard as I'm still not that confortable with lettering.

As you can see from the image above, one of the most difficult parts to write was "OF" I learned that I don't really like those letters together.

After this, I scanned these sheets and moved on to the digital part of the work.

Here is the finished product.

Experimenting with letters

Design (including illustration) was not always my first interest, actually it's a rather recent thing and as it always happens, there are still a lot of things to learn.

Lettering is one of those things so I decided that another goal I want to achieve this year is to start training my lettering skills, which are close to none.

To achieve this I needed new pens - any reason is a good reason to buy new pens.

I decided to buy Micron Fineliners, there was not much thought in the decision, I realized a bunch of people use these pens for this purpose, even Sean McCabe and if Sean McCabe uses them, they're probably good.

So I bought them last friday and had to start experimenting. These pictures show my first try, I know it's not perfect but I think it looks nice and it was a great exercise.

Monthly Calendar

Other of my New Year resolutions (besides restart blogging) was to create a monthly calendar that I could use in my phone.

For you to have an idea of how much of a procrastinator I am let me tell you that every year for a long time, I think "this year I'm going to create my own calendar" and this comes from the time I thought I was, or was going to be, a photographer, and wanted to do one with my photos. So this has been happening for at least four or five years. It's always a project in January that is forgotten by February and that I only remember by the end of december when it is to late.
This time it's going to be different, there's this blog to remind me of that.

So this year I decided to create a monthly calendar where I only have to create one month at a time, which helps take the pressure off.
It's not supposed to be the greatest calendar ever, my main goals are:

• commiting to it and not giving up; 
• experimenting things I don't normally do;
• trainning hand lettering.

So, without further ado, here's January:

computer | iphone5 | iphone4 | samsung galaxy s4

I started with a sketch on paper and then moved on to photoshop. Usually I prefer coloring in Illustrator as I work a lot faster with it.
The lettering is something I'm not happy with but will keep trying.

In the end, I was pretty happy with the result. So happy that I posted an image of it in instagram, maybe someone else would like it too as their wallpaper?  And to my surprise some people were actually interested so here it is. I tried to make it for the most common models but I believe they will fit other sizes if you resize it?

Also, out of curiosity, here's the sketch.