The Weather Today III

Another page from my upcoming picture book.

There seems to be no change to weather here for the next couple of days it seem. Soon I´ll be running out of bad weather pictures to post.

2302 Cat rain miserable paper-cut illustration _Melanie Franz

The Weather Today II

Yep, the weather here is not improving.

Another page from my almost finished picture book. Paper & Gouache.

2302 Rain storm paper cut illustration _Melanie Franz

The Weather Today

Seems summer is temporarily cancelled in Iceland.

Another page of my upcoming picture book.

2302 rain storm cat paper cut illustration_Melanie Franz

What’s the weather today?

Another one from my upcoming picture book. We actually have sun, first time in a week. Off for a walk!

What´s the weather today?

As mentioned in my last post, I tried something completely different and made a picture book out of paper cut outs. The rain drops are gouache. It was so much fun!

Image fitting the weather today….Ah Icelandic summer…..

2302 rain paper-cut illustration _Melanie Franz

Getting Out of the Comfort Zone

Hola, I am back! The family and I had escaped Iceland for a while to load up on as much vitamin D as possible. After an extensive road trip in Spain and a stop over in Switzerland I am all tanned, inspired and ready to get back to work!

Something a bit different to start with and that I have been working on this spring.

I had a creative block in January and an artist friend suggested to me to just try something completely different. An that I did. I bought a gouache set and a bunch of papers. The result is an almost finished picture book about the weather and some bad first gouache painting attempts.

I had a lot of fun with making paper-cut pictures and I am very happy with the result. I used gouache for the details. Here is a first peek. What do you think?

2302 owl paper-cut _ Melanie Franz

Jungle Plates

Design practice for a set of jungle themed plates. I used the same drawings as for the dominoes and edited them digitally.

2302 Jungle Plates design_Melanie Franz

Jungle Dominoes

Did these also for the illustration course in February. In hindsight I should have done the drawings digitally, as it would have saved a lot of time. I might redo it again at some point. It was still a great exercise.

2302 Design sheet_jungle dominoes_Melanie Franz

Space Friends

I took an illustrator course in February which pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to do my first digital drawing. I also learned how to do design sheets and pattern designs. I also became a lot better with my time management and to-do lists… somewhat 🙂

If anyone is looking for a great course, I can highly recommend this one at WeIllustrate.co.uk.

Happy Monday!

Meet the Artist

Adding a new piece to my portfolio. Almost happy how it turned out. This is the third version. Ink, watercolour and coloured pencils on mixed media paper.

2304 Meet the Artist_Melanie Franz

One Week 100 People

It took me much longer than a week, due to the flu, but I eventually finished them all. I also was colouring some of them in and still want to colour in the rest. I really struggled in the end to get to 100 but I can also see a definite improvement from the first page. I haven’t been drawing people for a while, so this was a great exercise.

Next I think I will do 100 animals 🙂

Making Bubbles

Something easy and fun on this Monday morning. Started to experiment with collage and gouache. It´s a quite calming activity I have to say.

I still haven´t finished my 100 people as I have been working on different projects. Maybe this week.

One Week 100 People VI

Another page coloured in….I spent maybe 3 min on each sketch and then another 5 min to colour it in.

One Week 100 People V

Still having fun with this challenge. Here some of the coloured in sketched. I realized that I am either drawing kids or old people, which are both more interesting to draw.

One Week 100 People IV

I got knocked out by the flu last week… fun times… But I managed to make it to 71 people so far. I will keep on going all the way to 100 until the end of this week. It also takes me longer as I want to colour them all in.

One Week 100 People III

Here come number 10 to 14. Combination of watercolour, coloured pencils and for number 12-14 I used olive green ink for the outline that I bought some time ago but never used.

One Week 100 People II

Love how these 4 turned out. I am using the opportunity to have fun with different styles and mediums. Used a mix of sienna ink, watercolour and coloured pencils for these.

One Week 100 People

It´s time again for this fun annual art challenge – One week 100 people. And it´s exactly that, you got one week to draw 100 people in any way you like.

I am using the opportunity to challenge myself to do some quick character sketches by using pinterest as inspiration. So far I´ve been having fun with it. Are you taking part in the challenge?

Hello, who are you? III

This was the mood yesterday when I was drawing. Part III of this little story. Here are part I and II.

I tried to stick to the previous style as close as possible. But there is a year in between the first 2 and this drawing. I feel like my style has become way more fluent, or something like it? What do you think?