Happy July my Beautiful Butterflies!
We just celebrated the Summer Solstice a couple of weeks ago so I decided this month I wanted to keep it light and fun with a cute little celebration illustration (oh how fun that rhymes). And of course, we're living in the Year of the Rabbit so my lil' cozy rabbit from earlier this year (January...February....I can't remember) is reprising her role in some new digs.
I also wanted to try a little something new with the style. I painted her, per usual, but I thought it would be a bit more crafty if I made everything in a "cut-out" style to give a bit of a paper doll look to the project and to give some depth. I've done this really just a few times before, so I've been itching to play with this look once again.
So, in breaking down the post, I have a handful of pics to show you my process culminating in a video (don't worry it's less than 2 minutes long - and you can watch it without having to listen) showing the assembly of this lil' babe.
I have a few things I've been working on with clients and myself that are in the early enough stages I decided I couldn't share them with you, so alas, I whipped up this light-hearted project to ring in the new season. If you want to skip straight to the video you can find that at the bottom of the page.
AND BONUS!! I have freebie coloring pages to match so you can play along. Scroll to the bottom to snag those downloads.
Okay, so first things first, I doodled this little rabbit pretty quickly on my iPad to get started.
Next, I transferred each element separately over to watercolor paper to paint.
Here you can see these little babes are all painted and ready for the next step.
Okay, my rabbit obviously needs a background, so I whipped up a little set design for her summer frolicking.
The final step before assembly (and video time) is to cut out each piece.
Time to dig into my video!! Click to watch below :)
FREEBIE COLORING PAGE DOWNLOADS
I do hope you all enjoyed this crafty post this month. I know I certainly did.
Until next month,
Rachel
Happy June my Beautiful Butterflies!!
We're officially in the heat here in Houston. And goodness, the sun is already kicking! I'm definitely a cooler weather girl, but alas I try to make the best of the summer with cute summery outfits, dipping my feet into the water, and enjoying some refreshing drinks.
Last month I promised you I would share what I've been working on, and let me tell you it's been a long time coming. I wrote a children's book about 6 years ago to be exact, after the birth of my niece Penelope. But once I wrote the book, I found myself so intimidated to illustrate it. So instead, I decided I needed to practice more and I found myself knee-deep in my "animals in clothes" series.
Months later, and many illustrations later, I found myself creating my space series, and on time went. I kept thinking I would go back to it, but I never quite did. But at the beginning of this year, I revisited the story and honestly quite enjoyed it. So, I thought this is the year that I'm going to start the illustrations. I have one book under my belt, and many illustrations in my portfolio, while the task still seemed daunting I decided it wasn't as daunting as before.
So this past January I set out on an epic research of book sizes, thumbnails, and book styles, and I sort of jumped in and have really found my way. I've just been in the sketching phase, but I'm really enjoying it so far and finding confidence as I re-work (and re-work some more) these illustrations. I can feel the color phase fast approaching and I know that will be a beast, and I will likely feel overwhelmed yet again, but I'm okay with that.
I'm planning on self-publishing this little lady since this project is more for me, but I thought I would share a few little behind-the-scenes snippets. The style and look will surely change when I get into color, and I'm sure so much re-working will happen, but a small little sneak peek of where I'm at is always fun.
I started with incredibly rough thumbnail sketches.
I started playing around with character styles, which have constantly been evolving through my different rounds of sketches and will likely change more as I get into color.
I've been reminding myself to enjoy the process as I go, instead of itching to get to the end. This is a labor of love and I want to learn and appreciate it.
I'm all about these little doodles. I just started printing them out from my iPad so I can play with the continuity of the style.
Here's a quick photo of me drawing on my iPad. I find that I sketch quicker on the iPad because of how I can alter and change and move around my ideas, but when it's time to paint it will be with a paintbrush.
Well, friends, that's all I feel comfortable showing so far. Just a quick little preview of what I've been working on behind the scenes. Hope you all have a great June and I will see you next month.
xoxo
Rachel
Hello, my Beautiful Butterflies!
April is officially over, and we're finding ourselves inching closer to summer. I spent the first two weeks of April (and my birthday) off on an adventure in South America where Autumn was in full swing. It was such a unique and beautiful trip and definitely a check off the bucket list. Because I'm mainly in catch up mode for work, I thought I would share a few pics of my trip with you for this post.
We traveled to Chile and Argentina, specifically the Patagonia Region, and went hiking on the W-Trail in Torres Del Paine National Park and again in El Chalten to see the infamous mountain range that the Patagonia Apparel Logo is based on. I find travel and hiking to really be a refresh for me and also a huge source of inspiration. Wanderlust, Adventure, and Nature play a large role in my work so it's always magical being immersed in that world in real life. This trip truly was magnificent, but it was also challenging from an endurance perspective. We spent 5 days hiking 50 miles with all of our stuff in our backpacks (25 lbs to be exact for me and closer to 30 lbs for Ricky). And then we drove to the El Chalten hike, a few days later, to hike 13 miles for the infamous Fitz Roy mountain range. We were a little rough for the wear by the end, but it was very much worth it.
Pictured above is the view of our last day on the W-Trail. We woke up at 4 am to hike to this viewpoint to watch the sunrise. It was definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip.
A little cluster of some of the animals we saw along our trip. 2 Penguins (which was such a treat because most had gone back out to the water), horses galore, and guanacos which are kind of like llamas that roam the land like deer in the US.
One of my favorite pics and spots on the trip. We were fully immersed in the beautiful fall foliage and experienced (on top of that rock) a 360-degree view of Autumn colors and mountains. Because Patagonia is so far south their fall coincides with our Spring.
A compilation of the many glaciers, lakes, and gorgeous mountains we say. We were truly gifted with such great weather considering how unpredictable the weather can be in that area of the world.
A view from the boat that took us to the start of the 5-day hike. Truly we were startled by the beauty and of course, we started to get so excited seeing everything from afar.
This is a final compilation of pics and a few of my hubs and me. We were definitely challenged on this trip in terms of endurance, but I cannot tell you how proud I was when we completed all of these hikes. We saw so many beautiful views that you can only see if you walk a ton of miles, so it made everything that much more special.
Not much art in this post as I said at the beginning, but I've been busy playing catch up, and next month I'll be sure to share some fun things I've been working on.
Until next time,
Rachel