May Calendar

It's that time of the month again.
April was a very special and busy month and flew by so fast. May promises to be busy too, let's see how it goes, also, I currently have no internet connection at home which is new to me and is the reason why this calendar comes two days late.
If you follow me on Instagram you may notice this months illustration is based on an illustration I did to give my mother on Mother's day (I'll post about it later). Mothers are so important that one day to commemorate them is not enough, how about a full month?

Hope you like it.

desktop | iphone | samsung galaxy s4

April Calendar

Hello there!
It's that time of the month again!
March flew by so fast, some important things happened that will keep me busy all through april and hopefully things will turn out great.
If you read my March post you know that this months calendar was already almost finished. This is probably the reason I'm not late this month but who cares?

There's also a small change, the desktop version is bigger this month as some people were having a hard time resizing it. If it's too big for you, resizing it will probably do the trick.
If you find something you think could be better not be shy to say so.
Enjoy!

desktop | iphone | samsung galaxy s4

work in progress

what I've been up to:

I can fly - book review

Hello there,

this second book review comes because I loved this book so much that I wanted to tell the world about how awesome it is.

I Can Fly was written by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by Mary Blair and is part of the Little Golden Book Classics collection.





This book from 1951 and renewed in 1979 is a small rhyme about a little girl with a lot of imagination that plays with a different animal in each spread.

My favourite thing about this book as to be the illustrations. I didn't know Mary Blair's works before but found them so magical that a book with a selection of her from this collection is already on its way.

The book ends (I've seen that in other edition this comes in the begining but I actually prefer it in the end) with a lovely bordered sheet of music called "I can fly" in which the lyrics are the text of the book.

What better book to read in an afternoon in the sun?

If you want to buy it you can for only €4.23 for example in Book Depository.

See you soon.

March Calendar

Hello there!

This month's calendar is already available,  and just one day late! Maybe next month it'll be published on day 1.

This calendar was a difficult one, I started in with a carnival theme and then remembered it'd only last for 4 days and decided to give up on that idea. After that I started one inspired by easter but then realized easter is only in april this year. I ended up with this illustration vaguely inspired by spring.

The good thing is I already have next month's calendar started.

Also, this month I tried to step out of the comfort zone (which is one of the goals of this project) and the illustration was made on photoshop and with brushes I don't normally use.

Anyway here it is:

desktop | iphone | samsung galaxy s4 

giggle sutra illustration challenge

Late last year I knew something great was about to be born through Ana Luisa's blog (one of my favorite blogs, actually) and when something is created with as much love as Ana Luisa puts in her projects, it shows. Giggles was launched last december, by Ana Luisa and Cintia and it is a sweet lovely project, as I expected.

When I knew they wanted to create a special edition for valentines day, where illustrators we're invited to draw different kamasutra positions, I immediately thought it was a great idea. But I had already a lot of work waiting and it was probably not a good idea to jump into another project. Besides it was a subject I never worked on before. 

And then I was in. I had to try it.

These we're the sketches made one morning on my way to work.

I wanted to create something that was sweet and funny at the same time. It wasn't supposed to be sexy, I wanted it to look like an intimate everyday scene between a couple that is together for a long time that's why they're wearing socks and their cats are also on the bed.

The colour palette choice is always a hard step for me: this time I knew I wanted to use few colours but I had a hard time combining them.

And here are the illustrations all together in one lovely giggles box.

 (the last two photos belong to Giggles)

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.

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.