Hello people! It has been a while since I wrote a post on the printing aspects of illustration so I took the opportunity with the launch of my NEW square postcards added to my shop to explain a little bit more about how I create the files that I would normally send to the printer. As a graphic designer, this is a process that I repeated many times but that it is utterly important in order to ensure a good quality result. Thus, on this post I wanted to cover a very important part of the printing process which is creating a pdf file that will preserve the quality and colour range of your illustrations as close to the original piece as possible. I will be covering a few aspects and tricks that will help you create foolproof pdfs to send confidently to any printer. This is a crucial method that I have used over and over again professionally while overseeing the printing results of magazines, books and even comic books! Therefore, I would like to share here my process using InDesign and again some tips I have used along the way. I will be using the file of my square postcards as an example. Although advantageous, there is no need for you to have a previous command of InDesign to follow this post since I will walk you through the process every step of the way. I hope you find it useful!
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Time Management and How to Stop Treating your Dream Like Another Side Project
First of all, I would like to thank all the support and kind messages for my last post a couple of weeks ago. It was a vulnerable post for me and to receive such kindness and support made me feel so grateful and useful. In this week’s post, I would like to discuss time management and its impact on making everything seem feasible while I also take the opportunity to show you my last piece which really illustrates the topic. You will understand why :-) This might seem like a very evident idea with so many productivity blog posts and videos out there but this is less of a “tips on productivity” post and more a “give time and value to your dreams” post. As always, I can only speak from my own experience and, as I am myself on the pursue of a fulfilling and sustainable creative life, I hope this can be useful to someone else going through the same.
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#ClimbEveryMonday | How to Keep Your Art Going When You Feel Like Giving Up
Hello everyone! As some of you might know, it has been quite a while since I have published in this blog. As some of you might already know I moved last year to Edinburgh in search of new life experiences, to broaden the scope of my work and to ultimately learn more about myself and in terms of my artwork. It has been a little over a year and throughout this huge change, I have stumbled upon many road blocks that affected my creativity. Many of those came directly out of my own fears, doubts and insecurities as an artist. I have been guilty of judging myself, comparing to others, experiencing fear of putting my artwork out there and being affected by the know-so-popular “impostor syndrome”. Do those ring any bells? While trying to cope with all those blockages, I realized that I often shared only the content that showed me as being productive, being full of ideas or mastering my craft. In fact, underneath all that was the internal struggle to gain confidence in myself, appreciating my artwork and letting go of the fear of being judged and of failing as an artist. Believe me, this was no regular battle, this was an internal, Game of Thrones like clash with my own White Walkers (spoiler alert!) ^-^ In this post, I wanted to share with you a little about my personal experience and a great piece of advice that I think it might be useful.
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Daily Creative Musings #2 Sharpen Your Ideas
Yes, that was my workspace yesterday after I cheerfully arrived home from a most satisfying purchase of my first metal desktop sharpener and some pencils. I started sharpening like there was no tomorrow and I literally treated all my pencils with a new pointy “haircut”. As you all know, using the right tools can make a huge difference in your work. I was reminded of that yesterday. I want to personally thank botanical artist and designer –and my teacher!– Jenny Haslimeier for showing me a new way to make art. I was eager then to start using my newly sharpened pencils on the onions and garlics illustration!
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Daily Creative Musings #1 Playing with leaves
As I was posting some progress images yesterday through my Instagram Stories, I thought to myself that it was a shame that some of those images or little videos got stored away and not so easy to appreciate progress. I also thought that it would be fun to transfer those stories into my blog as a personal diary mostly of my creative process, outside inspiration and other considerations. Without a specific plan on how I am going to do it, my attempt is to post daily as a why to keep those stories to myself and to, hopefully, be of some interest to you as well.
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