I wanted to show a few of the specialist techniques I had tried out, we are given a document with a few specialist techniques in them and I generally try to give most of these a go and find a couple that worked for me. This time around I found that bleach was a good experiment, and also stippling as I think it creates a nice effect similar to the tattoo kind of style I enjoy using.
Cut Out Designs
Usually the leaf shapes here was interesting to cut out with the watercolour design inside them. I think the sycamore leaves were more interesting as it just has a ore interesting and rough shape to it.
Embroidery Drawing
I had a go at this technique which I have always wanted to try but have not found the right sort of way to go about it, I painted some designs onto paper here and then drew some stitches on, with the black I think these produced quite an interesting dark outline. I think the stitching is quite realistic in the way that it is not the same size every time and does not follow the lines exactly. I tried this in colours too as it is realistic to try to blend the stitches or co-ordinate them with the fabrics as well.
Woven Technique
I tried out this technqiue which describes filling in boxes to create an image, I found this quite difficult and it just reminded me of Minecraft honestly. It was quite relaxing to colour them in but I just do not like the effect of it overall.
My website is done! I’ll post about it tomorrow with some screenshots, the website was on the checklist of things to do to get the business cards done too, as I did not want to print them without a website address on them. I also did the logo a few weeks ago and refined this until I really liked it as I would not want to print them and decide on a small change to the logo. While business cards are part of the press packs, they would also be really useful for my little hair accessories that I sell as they would just look like a more professional package than my little handmade labels.
I have some sample packs of things ordered too so I can get the right feel of them, some of them have some interesting finishes on them and choosing this could be a step up in the quality depending on the prices of it.
VISAPRINT
I started on Visaprint and found that there were so many options for the business cards such as premium papers and shapes, I thought maybe start at the basic and see what else looks nice, maybe a figure of 100 will be good to look at throughout as it should keep a good guide on price then.
Using the most basic settings here with standard corners puts the price of 100 at £21.59, adding premium paper puts the price up another ten pound ish, and rounded corners by another 7-8 pound again.
Looking again at the range here shows some of the starting prices for the different business cards. This shows the various prices for 100 by paper quality and shape:
Standard: 21.59
Premium: 32.39
Spot UV: 37.59
Rounded Corner: 32.39
Square: 32.39
Folded 250: 38.38
Slim: 34.54
Then looking again the quality and finishes here there is a number of different effects. I assume too that these starting prices are just for these, so if a couple were to be combined it would go up again.
Metallic: 39.73
Ultra Thick: 75.57
Pearl: 58.30
Linen: 37.78
Textured Uncoated: 32.39
Natural Uncoated: 32.39
Kraft: 48.58
Recycled Matte: 37.78
Glossy: 32.39
Matte: 21.59
So I would probably just go for a standard one on Visaprint to keep the costs down for the first lot of them, maybe changing papers or something then when I have time to actually see them in person.
MIXAM
So I found these samples that I ordered which do display prices on the side, although they do seem to be very high numbers for the prices. The prices do seem very good for these but I think I will go on the website and see what 100 are, as the larger numbers can be a little misleading and the word from means there are a range of options to chose from, that price being the cheapest.
So I designed a business card here, made from 400gsm silk paper, with a matt finish on both sides and round corners, which came up as £17 for the 100 which I think is quite good and a little cheaper than Visaprint and even adding the extra features onto it. It is important to see though that the price sometimes does not change for the quanitites, for example I found that 50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 cards all cost the same prices so it is important to see what you can get for your money.
Printed.com
I found the sample packet for the Printed.com options, which had a handy list of all these things that they can print, which is useful for creating an actual presspack when I come to it as I would also need postcards and A5 flyers with my CV on it as well.
The business cards were shown like this with their details on them, just without pricing which I think is something useful to know when you are choosing a favourite in that moment.
Shown here there are a number of options for the cards, standard ones, foiled ones, white ink and spot UV, all of which give an extra bit of interest but it does immediately put the price up a bit.
Again I chose my options here that would be realistic but not pure simple cards, I chose a 400gsm silk paper with printing on both sides in colour and a matte laminate on one side with rounded corners. For the 100 cards it comes out at 16.30 which again is not a bad price for the added features.
MOO
Finally I also had a sample pack for Moo, I also went on their website to look for the prices. Shown here again there are a few different options immediately, original, cotton, super and luxe, all going up in price a little.
The pack included a couple of different shapes on the business cards, I do like the soft touch cards especially but they do usually cost a little more. Looking on the website there was around a 28 pound price tag for the set of 100, without any added features, although there was only really rounded corners which added a few pound onto the price right here.
Banner Buzz
Again not a lot of customisation that was easy to see with Banner Buzz, and 16.74 for the 100 went up quite quickly for double sided printing for example.
Instant Print
I tried a website called Instant Print where I found 100 basic cards were 17 pound which I think is good, but it went up to 24 with the rounded edges which I am starting to really like. I ave also ordered a sample pack of these to have a look at them before I decide.
Banana Print
I tried a 100 pack here that is double sided on 400gsm silk paper, with rounded edges and velvet laminated, which I think would be quite extreme but they would feel very nice. I will check if this can be ordered as a sample pack first I think but for 20.95 with those added features I do not think this is bad.
Bizay
I tried a quote with this site and it very quickly started adding up the price with thinner paper than everywhere else too it actually became the most expensive.
Zazzle
Again the price went up very quickly here with small extras, so probably not an option for me personally.
I will reach out to some local printers and see what their prices are as well, so I think this will give me an idea of prices in my local area. I think my best options to look into are probably Banana Print, Printed.com or Mixam would be better options for me to look into more.
I decided to watch some tutorials on Skillshare and take some classes to learn to make the most out of Procreate, as it is a media that I use a lot and I am sure there are so many tips and tricks for using it more efficiently. One thing I have seen is using an Alpha lock, this means that the layer is locked on the shape you have created, so no strokes can be added outside of that area, this was really useful when I wanted to add a darker shade to the edges of the leaves and blend it out, without loosing that sharp edge I had drawn. This was really helpful and just meant that I did not have to go through a long process of working on a really small scale or rubbing out the edges around the motifs.
So I also followed a tutorial for creating burhses, as the watercolour brushes selection on there is not as good as it could have been, so I followed a tutorial to make my own, and learn how to make them so I could try and experiment with my own creations too.
The Painting Brushes
So firstly you need to bring up the brush panel and click the plus sign in the right hand corner of this.
The New Brush page
The first step is to choose a shape and grain for your brush, and this will make all the difference to the final result. For the Shape for watercolour I went with a circular kind of design, and looked through the grain for one that looked watery and stained to me, because the watercolour brush they supply on here, just does not look like watercolour.
The Grain Shapes
By clicking ‘Swap from Pro Library’ it takes you to all this preset brush grains and shapes to choose from.
Editing the Brush
Next, you go through each of the bottom panel sections, choosing variables on the stroke, shape, grain, dynamics, pencil and general, which just edits how the stroke looks and how it behaves with different pressures and movements. The strip at the top shows how it will look. The important thing to see is on the dymanics here, giving it a glazed or wet look completely changes the outlook of it and shows up a lot more texture which I think was a great trick to know how to do.
Editing the size
Editing the pencil pressure here you can see what editing the size does to it, it gives it this nice tapered edge so it can end in a more realistic way.
The Final Brush
So this is what I ended up with, it is not perfect and it can be a case of playing around with the sliders to achieve what you want to, but I think I am heading in the right direction here for the kind of watercoloury effect that I want.
I was so excited when the Wildlife camera arrived, as I could finally get to see what was eating the foods I was leaving out, its been about a week now where I have been leaving the camera in a few different places to try and find activity, and I will share some of the videos below that I captured.
Magpie
I started off by leaving the camera on the tall bird table at the bottom of the garden with some food on it, and the first couple of triggers are a magpie, which may seem like common birds but they are actually very cute and quite bold, I probably have a video of one of these most mornings at around 5 or 6, coming to see whats left in the little bowls I have been leaving out.
Magpie
A couple of videos of this one little one show him eating enough to last him a while, so I left the camera again hoping something else would get a chance for a look as well.
Chaffinch
Finally a little Chaffinch came and ate in front of the camera too which I think is very cute, and showed me how the camera works quite well at detecting motion. When the wind picked up, it did start detecting the motion of the trees behind and I did get quite a lot of these empty frames, but the positioning of the camera can help this, so lower to the ground where there is less likely to be any movement is better.
Field Mice
My first night I caught some field mice feeding out of the bowl, which was very cute. Not the hedgehogs I was hoping for, but also not the rats I was dreading. Since we stopped owning farm animals, I have not noticed many rats at all in the garden and this is not something I would want to encourage again.
Field Mice
I moved the camera around the garden a little and swapped the dog biscuits for cat biscuits, however that night, the only video was a large cat eating all the food and then leaving. I did not want to encourage neighbours cats in the garden either, we do not have neighbours where our gardens meet or join, so cats actually have to cross roads and walk a little distance to come here, and if they know there is food they will continue. So I next just set the camera up where it could see quite a long stretch of the garden or hedgerow, with a 20m trigger distance I figured at least I could know what was there and where they maybe go. A couple of nights went by without really catching anything, I tried putting one close to my front gate as I often hear movement at around midnight when I am getting out of my car after my nightly phonecall.
Field Mice
To see them like this without any food or anything being set up there is great as it means this is probably somewhere that they spend a lot of time. I also thought this may be a place to see hedgehogs as I have seen one up here before.
My next steps were to think of how to narrow down things that I was feeding, the cat food does seem to be something hedgehogs like better than the dog biscuits but I do not want to just feed cats. I found a tutorial for making a hedgehog feeding station online, which was basically a plastic box with a hedgehog sized hole in it and a maze made from bricks to ensure that nothing bigger could get to the food. I improvised a little with this, due to all of my plastic boxes being in use for holding fabrics. I found an old case for a boiler that had already been out in the garden a while, I blocked up one end of it and used bricks to seal up the other side, leaving a small hole for an entrance with a little maze, I then found a large tile which made a little roof for it to stop a cat just stepping into it too. There was even a hole in the top of it which I can cover and uncover to put food in and out of it easily. I left the camera with this in view last night, I was not expecting much as I suspect this would have to get used to movement near their homes, but I continue to play around with this each night, which has turned into a bit of a hobby now too, and hopefully I will have more to show another time.
I lasted showed some experiments I did into leaf printing, bleach and batik that turned out quite well, I wanted to continue with some techniques I had looked into trying as I felt they would work well for my leaves and plants.
Lino Experiments
I experimented here with a range of different materials and colour with the lino printing, using old book pages and a number of different coloured backgrounds. The impression of the white on the black paper is quite good I think, and it allowed for adding the gold and silver pens onto it as well which i think worked well. I had fun with this, mixing a few of my techniques together to make creative new pieces.
Rubbings
I used charcoal and oil pastels to create rubbings of the leaves, which picked up their skeletons quite well, which I was focused on when I was trying to print the designs as well. I quite like the green one as it shows a good size of the leaf and a lot of detail of the different veins in it.
Oil Pastels
I created these oil pastel images which started out as quite dense colouring, however with a cocktail stick, scratching away some of the colour allowed for a totally different level of detail in the design. I quite like this, and observing a real leaf while I did it helped to get the lines and veins in the right places.
Paintings
For these images, I used some basic flat shades of the greens, pinks and browns to create this gradual shading idea with the block colours. Using the darker green shades where the image would have been darker and fading to the lightest colour which I imagined the highlights would be.
These pieces were done using the same pink colour just diluted with either water or white paint. I think these actually turned out okay and I like how they are bold but with a little gradual shading in them.
Contours
I wanted to paint the contours of the images here, but I think the holly leaf ended up just looking like more of a line drawing, so I tried to do it with the nuts instead. I think this one is better and shows more shape to it, but this does look more like a strong light has been shone onto it so half is visible.
Embossing
I also tried embossing here to create the leaf skeleton, I think it would have been nicer if the lines had been thinner but I only had the one size brush. I do love the effect of embossing and I think I would like to order some more colours to try this with.
Stippling and Crosshatching
I experimented with stippling and crosshatching here using a few media, such as paints, ink, pen and pencil. I think my favourite is the pen stippling one, which took a long time but I think it looks like a graphic motif which could work well if I experimented with changing its colour more.
I wanted to look at making myself a professional website where I can show my range of surface patterns and any other projects that I start to take part in, I also wanted to do a CV page as well so the option to add a few pages was very important. I wanted to look at pricing to be able to compare some and what I would get out of the price for each one as well.
I started on Wix where the pricing looked quite good, for 4.25 a month there was a great deal available when the pound less only offered a very basic package. I was also able to type in the kind of website I wanted and what I do and the builder had a go at designing something I would like for me which I thought was interesting.
I tried Go Daddy too which immediately struck me as a larger company with more plans available in a range of categories which became quite confusing. The trouble with these monthly subscriptions too, they require a year paid up front which to me defeats the purpose of a monthly price. I think looking even at WordPress and how they could be turned into a functional website could be useful as I already feel a lot more confident on working it.
WordPress offers a simple 3 pound a month upgrade which would remove advertising and give me a free domain for a year which would be useful for google searching. I think the extra storage space could be useful too as my photos do tend to take up quite a lot of room. I think I may look into this option more.
I ended up choosing WordPress for the Personal one, it had everything I needed and included the domain which is great, so I made sure to mark the date so I can keep this next year too. I also chose this because I know my way around WordPress and this will be an advantage to building the site that I want to. Next I think I will get to building it, which will in turn prompt me to create a new CV which will help in the future too, and collate some of my images together in portfolio views.
I previously did a little painting with hot wax directly from a candle, but I thought about actually drawing with the non lit candle on a white surface and then painting over it to reveal the image. There is an element of luck and unpredictability with this because it is quite a quick technique as you have to remember where you have drawn already.
The Candle
So you draw a motif in the candle, which on the white will not show up at all really so it does need to be quickly to remember where you have drawn. Then paint a watery layer of watercolour over it, I found before doing undiluted Indian ink was too thick and dark to always resist the wax.
First Attempts
This shows some examples of it, the top one you can actually see where I did the first centre line in the middle of the motif, and as I did the leaves going up the sides I lost where the centre line was and you can see it does go off of it a little.
Overall though it was quite fun, I would try taking this a little further in the future I like by using a thinner candle, I think the results are similar to the idea of a bleach pen, which I might also try making to get better effects with the bleach.
The forestry was somewhere I wanted to get to as it was local but far enough way that it has a different atmosphere and different plants and trees. It also ran next to a river and there were plenty of shrubs and riverside plants to look at as well.
The viaduct and the forestry
The road loops under the viaduct which is quite well-known in the area, the train runs over it on the Heart of Wales line, between Swansea and Shrewsbury. The forestry starts by the road here so I decided to work around the edges and go into it a little.
Research photos
I found a range of interesting leaves and plants that I could use as motifs in my patterns. I also found a little broken-down farmhouse which I thought was great, a human structure taken over by nature would be a great habitat for woodland creatures. As I was leaving, I also found this dead tree which had been inhabited by a woodpecker, the hole goes into the tree where it nests and the rest of the holes where the woodpecker actually pecks the tree. There were a few more of these around the forest too and I was only a few metres into it at this point. I did not want to go too far as I did not know the area and there were dropping trees from the heavy winds from the previous few days of weather.
So the next steps were to start some studies of these images and explore the shapes and forms in the work.
When I do stippling, I tend to work out where I want the dark and light areas on the piece first and then go for it. I also decide whether I want to follow a picture or something as a source, or make it up to be more the same.
The Outline
I started the linear outline, and decided I want the darker bits to be along those lines, so having the centre and edges of the leaves darker and those empty spaces left lighter. Stippling is built up using dot work, so more dots where you want darkness and fading to very little dots where you want more white space.
A Timelapse of the Drawing
I decided to do a timelapse to show my drawing technique, you can see it is quite random and I do switch things up as my arm gets tired or a get bored of a particular spot. All in all I think this took around an hour to do.
Completed piece
The completed piece did turn out quite well, I do think that maybe it would have been improved if I had turned the centre into more of a blank vein then with the dense darkness coming away from this, rather than just having this dark dip in the middle. As I went for a more graphic approach with this over it being realistic anyway I think this could have been a little more detail to improve it.
I think the most accurate way of getting the leaf skeleton is taking a print directly from it, so I thought about doing some rubbings of them.
First of it I got some leaves out of the garden yesterday, so by this morning they were quite crispy and I figured this would be better.
The Leaf
So I usually work on the underside of the leaf because it has a stronger outline on it. Just add the paper you want the rubbing on on top of the leaf, making sure there are no awkward folds, this was another advantage of leaving it overnight, it had seemed to calm down a little with the folding.
Oil Pastels
I just got some simple oil pastels as I think the consistency of them would make for the best impression. Kids do this a lot and I remember rubbing coins and things when I was younger and we would just use crayons, so I think an oil pastel is quite close to this.
The Rubbing
Draw over the paper with the leaf underneath, I tend to go sideways over the veins as it picked up more of them, especially with this particular leaf but it could be different with a different leaf.
Tahlia Paige 