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Friday 29 April 2016

New Things!

This week has included a few things that have been on my to do list for a long while... One of those things being a logo for my Etsy shop.
I opened my shop back on the 4th of February this year and have been using a basic drawing of a badger as my logo. I knew this wasn't good enough, a logo should say something about you, include your name maybe, give an idea to what you are... and I was just saying... Badger.
Not that there's anything wrong with my badger, that little drawing I did has been part of my life for many years now! But it was time to push forward and have something more appropriate.
So I got to work this week designing a new badger...


The picture above shows it in it's early stages whilst I was using my Derwent Inktense pencils. These pencils are blooming amazing, they're like watercolour pencils where you draw on to paper like a pencil but when you add water they transform in to paint but as you can guess from the name... are ink and boy are they inktense! (pun intented!) They create extremely vivid colours and are very smooth flowing. I've found with some other brands the pencil lines continue to show through after you've added water but these never do that and as I said, the colours are amazing.
But enough about the gush over materials... I do get excited sometimes...
I wanted to have something fun and quirky as my logo, something that summed me up... of course a goofy badger would end up being that design! I wasn't sure if it might be too silly at first and not professional enough but once it was done, I knew it was perfect for me and my shop.

And here's the final design!
I wanted to have the traditional look which is why I went with pencils and pen instead of colouring digitally and my leaf doodle had to be included. I draw these leaves all the time, when I'm on the phone, watching films, waiting for things to scan and print... they've become as much of a signature thing for me as silly badger so they had to be included.
If my slight buzz doesn't make it obvious, I'm very happy with my new logo. It's now up on both my Etsy shop and my Redbubble profile and making things look much more connected.

Another thing that has been on my to do list for too long (I make a very bad habit of this!) is to make badges with the shrink plastic I bought last summer... yes, it's been that long. I played around with it when I first got it making some little bee designs pictured below.


They were fun but I didn't know what I was doing and they were very tiny... I took on a big challenge when I was learning and it backfired... each bee is buckled, the ink has smudged on some and the varnish I used at the time wouldn't take. So yeah, it didn't go so well. 
But this week I tried to create my original idea, little bird illustrations to be turned in to badges to hopefully sell on Etsy! Needless to say, I'm very happy with the results!


As you can see in the picture they shrunk well and the colours didn't smudge! I worked on a bullfinch (top) and a little wren (bottom) and in the picture you can see the before (left) and after (right) shots. The wren has become my favourite and the finch has opened up a lot of options for future designs. There are many finches out there and I am a big fan of them, some are ridiculously colourful and of course you also have the domesticated range that include the zebra finches.
The only problem I truly have right now is that I am a doofus. Because these were just a spur of the moment thing just to see how sizes and colours worked I didn't make copies of the illustrations for future badges... So I'm going to have to recreate both of these. 
The finch should be fairly simple, I've drawn loads of them over the last few months but the wren could prove interesting... although saying that I have drawn this wren three times now since the original doodle from december! The picuture below shows the second sketch I made.


So of course these add a new branch for my product list which is very exciting but at the same time I do realise I am adding a lot of extra work for myself! Each of these need to be hand drawn and coloured individually and baked in the oven, flattened, finished off and packaged up. I'm seeing the potential of many baking sheets covered in curling birdies! Now thinking of that I'm kinda excited!
It's a different approach than what I had originally planned but I'm loving being so involved in my creations! It's wonderful!

This week has also been the beginning of ideas, to do lists (again... yeah I know) and draft sketches for future projects including the raptor zines and some larger artwork. It's always fun to get ideas out on paper and see where you go with them! It's lots of fun.
There's also the possibility of some colouring sheets at some point! But that's all I can say for now.

Have a wonderful weekend!




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