Ramblings About my Life Path

Jewellery making has only been a part of my life for a very short while. Just about a year, in fact. But I just fell into it so naturally.

I’m a very curious person. I get easily fascinated, especially with creative fields and I like change and new inspiration. Over the years I have consumed courses in all manner of areas. I started with illustration, my very first serious love. From there it is an easy step into storytelling and writing short stories and fairy tales. 

With stories came interactive stories and computer games. I remember playing adventure games (the ones that mostly tell a story, with some good cerebral challenges thrown in) with my dad and sister and being awed with the thought – Some people do this for a living, getting paid to write adventures, paint lovely pictures to go with them and program them to work. I love writing, programming and illustrating in almost equal measures. The thought of having such a versatile job where all the parts of the brain were being challenged seemed like a dream to me.

I was brought up with a very practical sense, though, and everyone told me that illustrators don’t make money – they just scrape by and working in the game industry was like saying “I want to be a rockstar”. Yet I knew I wanted something creative, so I searched for a niche that I would be happy with. I had a brief fling with fashion design. I spent a year in Florence learning the language and hand sewing complicated outfits. The stay in Italy was awesome, the sewing not so much.

I then got a Masters Degree in Interactive Multimedia – Well, almost. They didn’t pass me on that final project. I think they wanted to see something more arty than a musical computer game. My creations never seem to conform to what the establishment call “real” art. Since then I have worked as a game designer (Turns out the games industry loves what I can do). It has been tons of fun, but my eye always strays towards new things and challenges. 
I have taken courses in writing, photography, drawing, painting, mixed media, jewellery making (of course), altering, journaling and Leonardo da Vinci. He is my idol – always looking to new things, fluttering like a butterfly – flirting with new subjects and new possibilities. I think he was looking for a better understanding of everything  - the bigger picture.

This is what drives me too. I think all my different obsessions feed into the same understanding. My painting feeds my writing, feeds my jewellery feeds my photography feeds my game design.

Besides the bigger picture, what I am seeking is first of all expression. Everyone has a unique voice; however they choose to use it. I like trying new areas and finding that voice again in a new outfit. Does that make sense?

When I started making jewellery it didn’t feel like a completely new career – it felt like a new set of techniques to say the same thing. I absolutely love it. Jewellery Design is going to be with me for a very long time.

Dominos

I've been looking with envy at the altered domino art, thinking, I want a piece of that!

So I took Zinnia's class, got some great ideas, and started practising on tiny little dominos that I already had in a big tin of games.

At first I used some lovely old illustrations as a motif and I really like how they turned out.

But using my own drawings is more satisfying. Here is the first one I did:

I want to do more, and in bigger sizes. Just love the way you can make a tiny treasure out of a little ordinary object like that.

French Poster Box

I just love those vintage French posters, so wanted to use one on a box. I replaced the boring clasp that came with the box and gave it little feet too.

Guy Fawkes

Out of season, I know. But there it is.

Flamingo Golf

He likes golfing at night when no one tried to use him as a club...

Nell's Dragon - the cover work

So, if any of you ready my other blog you will know that I have worked a while to finish the cover for my new book Nell's Dragon.
I have been playing with thumbnails and lots of sketched to try and find the best moment of the book to put on the cover. I decided on the dual between a drake and a dragon and I wanted to add my main character in there as well, because this is not an epic fantasy as such, more a very personal journey of a boy trying to find out where he belongs in the world.

It took me quite a while in between work and other projects to put this cover together and it was redesigned plenty of times. In many ways I think working with a brief from a customer might be easier than working for yourself. I know the whole book by heart of course and there was so many different subjects to choose from and I kept getting new ideas.

This is the finished picture.

Now, I am quite happy with the render and the finished picture, but something was nagging me. One thing was the boys face although I couldn't yet put my finger on it. The other was, that this cover needs to function on a website and on small e-readers, both in colour and in Black and White. I was afraid it might just be too busy and not read very well in a small thumbnail size.
So I explored another idea where I kept the background totally simple and just had two silhouettes doing all the work. I quickly sketched the characters and thanks to Inkscape got them smoothly converted to vector shapes so that I could play around with the sizes.
This is what I ended up with:

While this cover doesn't tell much about the story, it does hint at it, and it reads much better in small. I was still loathe to throw away the other, so I asked for my sister's opinion.

She was in no doubt that I should go with the silhouette one, in fact she pinponted exactly what was wrong with the first. The boy has such a look of "tormented saint" about him, that it is hard to empathise with him. She is soo right!

So the silhouettes won. That cover took me two hours to make where the other took me best part of three days. 

A Troll in a suit

For no particular reason.

Long-tailed Tit