My Experience with MATS B: Scrapbook page

Hi! So how was last week for you? Was it as hot where you are as it was here? It was so hot, thankfully we have air conditioning otherwise I wouldn't have gotten anything done! These past few days we got quite a bit of rain as well, which is good because it was sorely needed. My husband and I also celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary this weekend! It always amazes me how much time can go by and still feel like only a few days or even years. I am very lucky to have him in my life, he's very supportive of what I do and where I'm trying to go, and he's incredible with the girls!

In work news, I finally completed my scrapbook page for MATS B!! I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have this finished! And not just because it's done, I am also very proud of how it turned out. I think it's my best work for the course to date :)

My Scrapbook page for MATS B

The assignment was to create a scrapbook page of elements in a 12x12 format for a cruise theme. Since Lilla prefers to go the vintage look (and really, who can argue with that? I LOVE vintage) and I enjoy sea life, I decided to combine the two. I also really wanted to include some cute characters and gave my marine creatures some personality and cute faces. I think I managed to stay out of the childish/baby look with a more sophisticated palette of colours, but I do see that it's obviously meant to attract more women than men. I also managed to include some of the lettering that I've been working on this week, since it followed the theme I was working on, and I think the typography matches the feel of the icons and finished piece very nicely.

What was amusing to me was that when I finally got to sit and start putting the elements together, it seemed like it took no time at all. The final piece almost seemed to make itself. That was a very nice feeling too! When you make the elements separately like I did, it can be difficult to know what the final will look like and there's a fear that all your hard work just won't mesh and you'll have to start over, so it going together so smoothly was amazing!

I'm planning on offering it as a downloadable digital scrapbook page on my Etsy shop, what do you think? Is this something you'd use? Since it will be a .png file you could also use the elements to make up cards and whatnot.

Well, that's about it for this week. The girls are enjoying their last week of day camp for the summer so I'm hoping to put some good effort in before it's done. I am going to be taking some time away from my family later in the week to visit family north of here for a few days. It will be nice to get away from being a mom for a little while and recharge the batteries so-to-speak.

I hope this week is good to you and yours. Stay safe and have fun :)

If you'd like to see more of my work or keep up with me day-to-day you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook. If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave me a message.

Until next time,

Mandy

If you're interested in commissioning me, click on the Contact Me button at the top to send an email, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)

My Experience with MATS B: Paper

Hi again!! How's your week been going? How's your summer so far? The weather last week was hot and muggy and we only got a very little rain. Thank goodness for air conditioning! My girls were at day camp all last week so I managed to keep to a regular work schedule. This week they are home with me and I will be adjusting my workload so I can spend some fun time with them :) If you've been following me on Facebook (click here to be taken to my page) you already know that this past week I've been working steadily painting and designing icons for one of my MATS B projects. Yay for moving forward!!

Last week I talked about my experience last November with the Make Art that Sells course MATS A, you can read that again here. This week I'd like to talk about the MATS B course I'm taking and what's different about it vs the MATS A course. Also, because my last post was so long, and because I'm still working on MATS B assignments, I thought I'd break up these posts a bit more to give your poor tired eyes a rest from my ramblings :)

MATS B is another portfolio building course and is considered to loosely be a continuation of the MATS A course, though you don't have to do them in that order. The subjects included in MATS B include paper, baby/children's apparel & decor, scrapbooking, editorial, and party paper. Unlike the one I took in November though, this one is completely self-paced, do it in your own time. I enrolled for the course when it was on sale in late December (I definitely advise going for the sales, it was a great deal!).

I started downloading and reading the first assignment immediately. Now, the very first thing I have to say about the self-paced course is that it's a lot more difficult to keep to a schedule when you have almost 2 years to complete the course. There's no push except what you give yourself. On the one hand this is wonderful because it allows you to work at your own speed. You can take all the time you want to research and try things out before you commit to your finished piece. On the other hand, it makes it much easier to drag out the research portion, to allow your inner perfectionist to block your efforts to work, and basically take two months instead of one week to finish your first assignment.

Here is my first assignment completed for Paper:

My finished piece for Paper. The topic was a holiday greeting card using cookies.

I actually have seven more sketches in the same theme but with different images that eventually I'd like to paint up as well. This piece I did completely traditionally. It's done on water-colour paper with gouache. I didn't add any lettering because at the time I was not very comfortable with my lettering skills and I wasn't confident that it would turn out well.

When I finished this piece and looked at the calendar, I couldn't believe how long it had taken me! The time felt like it flew by! I felt pretty bummed that it had taken me so long to complete the first assignment, so much so that I didn't jump right into the second one. Okay I admit it, I was scared. I felt like a failure, which I admit wasn't fair to me because I'm still very new to the whole illustration schtick and scheduling is one of the many things I will struggle with, as all Freelance Illustrators do. But it took awhile for me to pull myself up and open the second assignment, which I will talk to you about next week so stay tuned :)

In the meantime, have a great week and if you're looking to see more of my work or my current progress you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook. If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave me a message below.

Until next time,

Mandy

If you're interested in commissioning me, click on the Contact Me button at the top to send an email, I'd be happy to answer any questions :)

My Experience with Make Art That Sells

Hello again!!

For the Americans that read this, today is Independence Day, so Happy 4th of July to you!! For the Canadians, Canada Day just passed and I hope you had a good one! Yay Canada!!

As promised I'd like to tell you about my experience last November when I enrolled in the (last) live course for MATS A. First let me tell you a little about Make Art That Sells. No, I am not an affiliate and I do not get any reimbursement for my opinions, so you can relax knowing that what is written here is completely my own thoughts.

So, MATS is an online set of courses that are designed to help those that aspire to make money from their art through product licensing. Lilla Rogers (an artist in her own right and art agent) designs and runs each course and in the live programs offers weekly reviews of select student works. Each course runs about 4-5 weeks, with a new project each week so they are pretty intense! Lilla starts you out with a mini exercise to help get your juices flowing and then you have about 4 days to finish the assignment if you want your piece in the pool to be selected for her live review. For the review, she generally selects pieces that will best help her offer tips/advice for the whole group. There are also self-paced courses for those that would prefer to take their time - there's no live review in the self-paced courses.

As of this post there are 5 courses available on the MATS site, including her annual Global Talent Search where she selects one artist for her agency to represent. MATS A is a portfolio building course and covers 5 topics: bolt fabric, home decor, children's books, wall art, and gift. If you'd like to visit the site, click here. The cost for the courses is fairly steep at £259 or $344 US, but you get a LOT of information including insider tips on how to break into the industry and interviews with leading experts.

I came upon this course through one of my Facebook groups for Illustrators and thought it sounded like exactly the push I needed to grow my skills and understanding for what it takes to be a professional Illustrator. I have to say that I was not disappointed. The energy level is very high for 5 weeks straight, and if you work slowly there is no break for you to catch your breath. By the time the course was done I was exhausted! Here's what I created for each assignment:

Bolt Fabric:

My design for Bolt Fabric. The topic was Vintage Pyrex and pasta.

The bolt fabric assignment was my first ever exposure to the creative world of textile design. I have to admit that even with Lilla's instruction I was completely clueless!! We were to design a fabric with vintage pyrex casserole dishes and pasta (using a dark background if possible), as well as a minimum of 2 co-ordinates. For fun I decided to use gouache for this piece. I drew and painted each element then scanned them into my software and cut out to arrange the final design in Photoshop.

Home Decor:

My design for Home Decor. The topic was Staffordshire Pottery on a plate/dish.

This second assignment was not my favourite. We were to create a design in the style of Staffordshire pottery. I don't know if you've seen any of the Staffordshire figures, but they are not the most appealing characters, even if they do have interesting political stories behind them (google it for interest if you've never heard of it before, it's worth the read). This time I did stick to watercolour, and again I mostly worked on each element traditionally, then scanned, cut out and arranged the design in Photoshop which I then put on a plate mockup with a mask and background added.

Children's Books:

My design for Children's Books. The topic was a cover for the story The White Cat.

The Children's Book assignment was the one I was looking forward to the most. The story is about a princess that is turned into a beautiful white cat. She's visited by a young prince looking to prove to his father that he can be king. The cat helps him to solve each of the King's ridiculous quests through fantastic and magical gifts (the nuts are important for each gift). You can find the story easily on Google to read, it's a very old tale. Again, I worked in watercolour (you can see some of the paper texture), though for the cat's veil I did introduce some coloured pencil for a lacy effect. Then I scanned and arranged in Photoshop.

Wall Art:

My design for Wall Art. The topic was an abstract flower using the colours green and yellow with some lettering.

My least favourite topic was Wall Art. I have never done an abstract painting before, and we were to incorporate geometric shapes and stick to the colour palette. I actually had to design this out before I even tried painting it. I cut out squares and rectangles out of card stock, overly simplified the flowers, and added lots of texture with brush strokes and bubble wrap. The entire piece is 24x24 inches on canvas using acrylic paint. Talk about stepping out of my comfort zone! I have never done anything like it before. I actually really like how it turned out and I love the colours and textures :)

Gift:

My design for Gift. The topic was to create a zippered pouch with hyper lush art, using your own collections.

I had a hard time with this assignment because I don't actually have many collections, so I reached out to the internet for inspiration. I was mostly thinking about vintage because Lilla suggests it in almost everything she talks about, so I looked for a vintage colour palette and then searched for images of antique keys and vintage buttons. I came back to gouache for this one, but again drew and painted each element which was then scanned and arranged in Photoshop. The final image was masked over a mockup of a zippered pouch and the background elements were created by me as well.

There were quite a few times during this course that I felt intimidated, worthless, and talentless, but Lilla is very encouraging and so is the Facebook group of live people taking the course with you that you can get suggestions from for each piece. In my group there were a lot of people with way more experience than me, both as illustrators and working with software, many of whom had been trying to break into the market for awhile and it showed. 

I got a lot out of this course. When it was over my brain felt like it had been squeezed like a sponge and when it finally settled down I knew I would never think the same way again. I learned so much about so many things that I can't even describe it. I think you can see a definite progression of improvement in my work as the weeks went by as well. 

I think that I'm going to stop here because this post is getting very long. There's so much more that I could say so if you have any questions please feel free to drop me a line or two and I'd be happy to answer them :)

Until next time,

Mandy

If you're interested in commissioning me click the Contact Me button up at the top to send an email, I'd be happy to answer any questions!

Third week of June

Hello! Welcome to another weekly summary of my work. This week is more graphic design and a little less illustration, but they are all my hard work so I hope you enjoy seeing what I've been up to.

Logo re-design

I had been asked by a small business that makes awesome and quirky kids apparel to help with her logo re-design for her upcoming rebranding event. In the end we came up with multiple images and formats for her to use all over her social media and final products for her brand. Here are a few examples of the finished design.

This is the little boy sheep with her business name. I love the missing tooth!

Here you can see the little girl with the little boy sheep. Aren't they adorable?!

I drew each character in pencil, then scanned them into Illustrator and Photoshop to finish them off. The business name is entirely hand-lettered, scanned and polished in Illustrator as well. You can see some of her products here.


DesignCuts Tutorials

Last week I told you that I had been working on some of the free tutorials that you can find on DesignCuts.com and that I would show you the results this week. Well, here they are. I can't take any credit for the final design or layout of these two pieces as I was following the tutorials, but there are some changes like the fonts and some of the word choices are mine.

A beach festival poster. This was a lot of fun because
you had to adjust the white frame to fit within the paint strokes. This was
done in Photoshop.

Oh this was so much fun. There were so many elements that had to be added,
adjusted, layered on, masks were used, etc. A true stretching of my abilities in Illustrator :)

Teacher Gifts

Like for many children, this is the last week of school for my girls and I thought it might be nice to do up one of the lovely monogramed wreaths I've been doing for each teacher. That's when I doubled my workload because each girl has two teachers for which I am both grateful for (who doesn't think classrooms need more teachers?) and non-plussed about because it meant two more wreaths than I had intended. But I accepted the challenge non-the-less :)

I did run into a few problems like a head cold the likes of which I haven't seen in quite some time that completely took me out of commission for a few days, and my lovely 0.25 mm micron pen tip broke halfway through the project. When I had recovered from my cold I thought I'd see how bad the broken tip would work but it was just awful. I really didn't like the result so I went out and bought myself a new one (yay art supply shopping!!).

These are the finished wreaths. I am going to frame them in an inexpensive frame as well.

Someone mentioned that it would be a good idea to include a business card with these so now I have an excuse to do up my own business cards as well! I also want to write up a little blurb about what these are and what makes them special, as well as the thank you card for all the work they've done over the year. I know my family really appreciates the effort they put in :)

That about covers this week. Next week I'd like to show off some of what I did in November when I took MATS A as that course really changed everything I do and I'd love to talk about it to someone, so why not you?

Until next time :)

Mandy

If you're interested in commissioning me click the Contact Me button up at the top to send an email, I'd be happy to answer any questions!

Line work practice...

Hello again!

I hope that your week was wonderful and relaxing, or maybe you were particularly productive, or perhaps you switched it up and just kicked back for once. My week wasn't particularly productive. The weather here was unseasonably warm and it made working more challenging than usual. However, I do have a few things to share with you :)

I've always been envious of artists that can draw simplistically. I don't know why it doesn't come more easily for me but it doesn't, so I jumped at the chance to learn from Lisa Congdon through CreativeBug.com. She's an amazing textile designer and artist and she does fabulous line art. She also has several books if you're interested in looking her up on Amazon or your local library. I first heard of her in my MATS A class. Anyway, this week I spent a lot of time learning and practicing and here are my results:

I "borrowed" a blue sheet of construction paper from my girls
craft bin for this one so I could practice with my white gel pen.

I'm still very nervous doing line art and I'm not altogether sure how to use it effectively, but I see a lot of designers and artists use it as part of a larger picture or with hand lettering. I'm going to try to practice with it more because it is very relaxing and very beautiful.

I did also find some time to work in a bit of brush calligraphy as well. I do really enjoy practicing these. I think I might try to incorporate some line drawing with these as well, just as soon as I figure out how :)

Thought I'd try combining what I learned from
Lisa Congdon with some brush calligraphy and colour :)

That's all from me for this week. I hope your week turns out exactly as you hope it will. Until next time,

Mandy

June is starting off very well!

Hello! If you've made it to this blog from my previous blog Art by Amanda Wiklund, welcome! If you're new to my work and have no idea what's going on or what to expect, welcome! I'm happy you could make and I hope you will enjoy reading about my work and my journey as an Illustrator :)

It's been quite awhile since I wrote anything and I have had a very busy 18 months. In September of 2014 I started a certificate in Graphic Design which I have only just finished this past December. I also enrolled in MATS A (Make Art That Sells) with Lilla Rogers, which completely changed how I work and how I think about my art. I was so inspired by MATS A that I signed up for MATS B as well.

I have also discovered some amazing Illustrators like Holly Exley from the UK and Frannerd. Unbeknownst to either of them, they have been teaching me a lot about what it is to be an Illustrator and how to go about doing it!

I have not been keeping idle amongst all this learning either. I have been working on my style and trying to loosen it up a little. I'm also learning how to do brush calligraphy. Dawn Nicole has an awesome site that shows most of what you need to know and she has a monthly lettering/doodle challenge on her Facebook page that I've been enjoying.

This past week I've been making wreaths :) Oh these were so much fun to do!! I've been wanting to start painting loose flowers and more doodle-y shapes for quite awhile now and this little project helped me to get started with it. Here's the result:

I pinned the tutorials I learned these from, so if you're interested in seeing them just let me know and I will update the post to include them.

And the biggest news yet is that my art was featured in the 11th issue of an online art magazine called MAEZA!! I am so excited about it. Click here to read it for yourself (note that you will need flash to view it and it doesn't view well on a mobile)!

Two illustrations were included from my work amongst so many other very talented artists! I am very proud and pleased to have been a part of it. I hope I will be able to do so again :)

I think that's all my big news for now. I am also working on a webpage portfolio of some more of my work with a leaning towards illustration. You can check it out here.

I know this was a long post but I don't expect future posts to be so wordy. Please be sure to check out the links, maybe visit my Facebook page, or even leave a comment below. 

Click the Contact Me button up at the top to send an email if you're interested in commissioning me, I'd be happy to answer any questions!

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