Welcome 2015!

It is this time of the year already!! I wish you all a very happy, healthy year full of laughter and love! For me, 2014 was full of new. A new country, a new place and a a decision to follow my passion of illustration. It was a very good year, and I feel so incredibly lucky for what I have.  I don't really have resolutions for 2015, or 'plans', but rather ideas of projects and hopes, and I will sure do my best to do great work that I can be proud of, so I can start living of what I can do best. I learnt a lot in 2014, and I will make sure to be in constant learning this year. I am always a bit impatient, to learn so much in a short amount of time, but I just have to take my time!

May 2015 be amazing

Olive tree handlettering

Olive-tree

I have been working with new tools lately and this experiment with my calligraphy nib to draw is something i will work on further. I like how fine the lines are coming out.

Flowers everywhere

Today, I would like to share a bit more than just the final piece. I am going to share the steps i used to arrive to the final lettering, in terms of composition and colors. That way, you can learn more about my work & thought process.  

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step1

Step 1:

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step2

Step 2: I tried a white ink on black paper to see what it looked like, but i came back to the watercolors because I didn't think it fitted the quote. I wanted something light. 

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Step 3: I took the same quote, but put it in french, just because normally I only do English, so for a change! I tried some different combinations of watercolors and really liked what happened in the words "les voir", so i kept these colors as reference.

step4

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step3

Step 4:  Another tryout similar to step 3.

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Step 5:

I quite like the floating composition of this one, but there are still things that don't look nice. The words "les voir" is too much on the left and leaves a big white space under "veut bien". Let's try to improve that. Of course i could move the words in Photoshop, and i usually do some Photoshop to makes things look more harmonious, but this time, i am going to play the game fully :)

step5

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lettering-fleurs

lettering-fleurs-square closeup

Final piece: I am quite happy with this final composition and colors, so I stopped there. Of course, you can always make everything better and perfection it, but it is also nice to be able to stop at some point. 

Carl Sagan's book quote

lettering-circle

Last week i bought a new nib for my calligraphy set, and it works really nicely making super thin lines and thick ones when you add pressure. You can find the nib here.