Return of the Pink Spaceman (Jan 2011)

I recently upgraded my iPhone 3Gs to a 4S, which meant ordering a new gelaskin for my phone. I decided to keep the same design as I had for my last phone – the pink spaceman.  My new  phone is photographed here on my pink iPad cover.   (Pink!)

MOO Christmas Cards

MOO Christmas Cards, a photo by kathrynlinge on Flickr.

They took a loooong while to arrive (over a month – and they were a week late!), but my MOO Christmas cards made it to us before Christmas Day, and have at least been posted to their recipients before New Years Eve. And they’re pretty too!!

Christmas Cards, 2011

I have a soft spot for MOO cards, and have bought a variety of products from them in the past.

Right now they have  free shipping when you spend over 20 GBP (it ends tomorrow!!) and it turned out that that was sufficient incentive to get me to order some new Christmas cards for this year.

Inspiration came from holiday snaps we took in Hawaii last Christmas (plus one photo from the Grand Canyon), but I decided to add a few extra details to ‘bump up’ the holiday spirit.  Can you tell  ?? 🙂

My order went in last night and I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product!

Dude, Where’s My Robot?

I’ve just finished attending Swancon 36 (aka Natcon 50, aka WA’s  Premier Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention).  It was a fabulous convention – lots of friends were there and the Hyatt is rather fancy.  However, one of the biggest highlights for me was showing a couple of pieces in the Natcon 50 art show, ʻFuture Imperfect: Exploring the Future from the Pastʼ.  This was an invitation only event, with the brief to explore the way people have historically imagined our present, bringing the past and the future together in new and interesting ways.

I spent a lot of time pondering what this meant to me, but in the end I just couldn’t stop wondering ‘Why don’t we have robots yet?’  We were promised robots (heck,  we were promised jet packs and flying cars too!), but in reality very few robots exist of the type portrayed in SF literature and media. But we still have heaps of mechanical (electrical?) devices  and, while they might not do the vacuuming*, iPods, mobile phones, and computers are becoming almost indispensable in today’s society.  So I decided to  juxtapose the robots we though we might have,  with the robots we actually have.

To make the prints, I resorted to my old robot love, Illustrator, but tried to go with a retro and slightly steam punky feel. I got them printed on canvas, as I thought that would suit the style and all together they worked out really well. I sold one of my prints! I got some lovely comments ( as well as a copy of long running print based ‘zine from one of the older Natcon attendees – so sweet!)

I also chaired two panels about the art Show, one on technique and one on theme and it was great to hear what the other artists had to say about their technique and how they’d approached the brief.  Everyone’s work was very different and there was some fantastic use of different techniques and themes,  including literature (Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep and replication),  war propaganda, as well as some true computer generated 3D art (produced using program code as the interface!)

 

*Actually the Roomba will do your vacuuming for you.

Drawing Life: Friday Pug

A quick vector art Pug in Illustrator. Original challenge here: http://drawing-life.livejournal.com/9626.html  (And, yes, Thursday is still to come!)

Farewell Swancon (plus Award!)

I have spent a fair chunk of the last year in the presence of the Contact: Swancon 2009 logo.

It ended up on t-shirts, in powerpoint presentations, progress reports, the con book, on posters, flyers, mugs, membership badges, icons, banners and probably other things I’ve forgotten. And it was a really good experience (and fun!!) for me to be able to try out all these different formats. However, Swancon is over for another year and it’s now time to say farewell to it, the logo and also the experience of being on the Con committee!

I can’t say I *won’t* enjoy having a bit of time back for other things, but I really do feel glad to have been part of such a lovely and organised committee. I’m sure it definitely helped that many had been involved in a Concom before, plus the excellent institutional memory of some. I’m still in awe of how much time and commitment everyone put in, and the attention to detail. I am left with some great memories.

It was also very nice to be awarded the Fan Art Tin Duck for the logo. There were some great finalists in the category – and I’m sure I was helped by the fact that con-goers would have had a hard time escaping sight of it whilst they were voting, however it’s still really lovely to get acknowledgement on something I’ve worked hard on. The major highlight of the award ceremony for me, however, was Ju when she received the inaugural Chair’s Award. So very well deserved and her acceptance speech was very touching 🙂

New Spaceman in Town

I can now reveal the third picture in the Spaceman series, as alluded to in this post. Man in Space joins Luna Oddyssey and Moonscape and was commissioned by catundra, after she saw the original Luna Odyssey in the 2008 Swancon Art Show. It was a really interesting experience doing a new spaceman, some two or three years after the original. I felt I had better control over Illustrator, although most of the techniques I used were the same.

(You may also recognise Man in Space as the final destination of this)

(And there’ll be a copy of him in the 2009 Swancon Art Show 🙂

Label for Vanilla Extract

My last project was to make up a quick label for the bottles of vanilla extract I’ve been making:

I did this in a couple of hours on Christmas Night. I thought an orchid would be appropriate, as that’s where vanilla beans come from. However I was also at my boyfriend’s – without internet – and so I was reduced to looking through my photos for reference material. Fortunately I found this wedding photo that actually worked out well (it’s an orchid, if not a vanilla orchid). A bit of tracing and some lazy font selection later, and I had a label. I printed them up on clear sticky labels and stuck em on 🙂

I tried lots of colours – darker worked better than light, which I probably could have had worked out beforehand, had I thought through everything. Overall, though, I’m pleased with my efforts.

A Coat of Arms

My Dad belongs to a special German club, which I won’t try to explain too much about because it’s a bit crazy. However, as a fully-fledged member he needs a coat of arms. He’s been a fully fledged member for over a year, but he still didn’t have one so I took a couple of photos of some the other members’ coats of arms at their Xmas function (there’s a set layout) and made him one for Christmas.

Most of my time was spent tracing the knight from one of the photos, though I took some liberties with the colouring and highlights on the fabric. I used my Encyclopedia of Fonts to identify the font used (Old English ITC) so I could get the exact same one. The periodic table is all my own work 🙂

Recent Projects: The Spaceman Series

I completed a couple of Illustrator projects for Xmas.

First up, a sibling picutre for planeterry’s Luna Oddyssey, the Moonscape.

The Moonscape uses a bit more colour and I’ve actually rejigged the original to make it a bit more colourful too.

There is a third picture in the series, which is still in secret mode, but I’ll blog it in Feb when it’s recipient has received it 🙂