My Coloring Book - on Kickstarter!

During the last 3,5 years (how time flies!) in my very limited free time I was preparing a quite fun personal project. And now it's theoretically finished (hip, hip, hooray!).

So, what's this project about? It's a coloring book with diverse hand-drawn vintage sceneries. 

I know, it sounds like a quick and easy project. You could build a house, plant a tree and raise a kid during this time. But hey, I might have put some significant effort into these drawings (have I mentioned that my spare time was very limited?). And if I only knew... making the drawings was just the beginning! 

Another time-consuming task was finding a proper printing house which would be able to print "Vintage Sceneries" according to my highly non-standard requirements. The crucial aspect was thick, high quality paper which would work for watercolors, felt pens and crayons. For some reason, only a few printing houses are able to do that! I hate to be fussy, but a lot of different paper types were tested in order to find the right one. 

Not-so-crucial, but still important issues were perforations enabling removing sheets, aesthetic binding and a cherry on a top - gold and shiny frame on a cover. 

Then I had to do some math in order to determine the campaign rewards. And check it... twice.

And finally, preparing the campaign itself. Only time will tell whether I did it correctly... 

The campaign will last for 30 days. 

Rewards will consist of pdf versions, printed books, printed books with one page colored by my humble person and original ink drawings.  

Below there is a sneak-peak of "Vintage Sceneries":

I don't want to reveal too much at the moment, but there are Victorian houses, gothic graves, mysterious forest huts, medieval fantasy buildings and even a ghost sheep.

Wish me luck! I hope that you'll check out the campaign sometime :) 

If it sounds interesting, check the campaign yourself :)

Mysterious Temple

Ha! I bet that you totally forgot about my blog… I apparently did. A year and a half of silence would suggest that anyways.

The illustration below was actually made over one and a half year ago, which could confirm that I haven’t drawn anything since a looong time. But that’s not true, I swear. I’ve been just extremely busy with projects I cannot share with you… yet.

I’ll be brief (just as a busy person like myself should be).

In the beginning, I made a few concept sketches. Not real pieces of art, I know. But don’t lose hope:

Outlines drawn in pencil:

Some details in waterproof ink:

The whole building and the foreground were masked with masking fluid to protect these areas from being painted over with very liquid paint (“wet on wet” technique). Mountains were salted to achieve these textures:

Working on the sky with watercolor paint mixed with gum arabic. Previously masked areas were painted slowly and carefully:

Hmmm… looks almost like the previous step. Maybe I just wasted my time, but I actually added some extra precise shadows and highlights with ink and dense white watercolor paint:

The One

We “met” almost 5 years ago and it felt like love at first sight (at least from my side). Since then I wanted to draw this building many times but somehow the right moment never came… under those 5 years (doesn’t sound convincing, I  know). I always had a soft spot for old wooden buildings with charming details and this one was very old and really beautifully detailed.

It’s called Vastveitsloftet and was originally build in  XIVth century in Norway. After a few hundred years it was transported to Stockholm’s Skansen.

The surrounding is really picturesque as the building is placed on a high rock, overlooking a bay. If we have poor eyesight we probably won’t even see gigantic, grey socialist architecture on the other side of the bay.

The building originally served as a storehouse and maybe that’s why it was so carefully decorated.

What I find charming in a wooden architecture, are imperfections in the material: knots, cracks, signs of deteriorations, and elements in different sizes.

One day later...

Sweet, but… dark, desaturated tones would be much more sufficient.

And one more day... 

Gloomy, but not too gloomy (i.e. lagom gloomy). For some strange reason, this mood fits old Scandinavian buildings quite well :)

BLIGHTINGALES - music album illustrations

Based on my long and insightful researches (i.e. checking “likes” on Facebook and Behance and posting a one-question questionnaire on DeviantArt) I discovered, that my viewers/readers are most interested in my gothic illustrations.

Oddly enough, I don’t have too many opportunities to make such artworks. But today I can finally share with you a mysterious, ruined gothic cathedral painted as a cover illustration for a grey-metal (doom-death-symphonic black) band “Darken My Grief”.

So far I could only listen to a few demo fragments, but I hope I managed to capture an appropriate atmosphere. Luckily the band’s frontman – Duddu had quite a clear vision regarding the whole graphic design.  Considering this, the task may sound like a piece of cake, but in practice, it meant seemingly endless editions of the whole mass of tiny little elements. Apparently, that’s what happens, when two perfectionists meet. Anyway, the final result was worth the effort!

One of my ugly concept sketches – let’s call this phase “a necessary pain”. Probably at this stage the clients are seriously wondering whether they made the right choice when hiring me:

The final illustration – I had almost a total freedom here. The only requirement was to capture a woman and a flock of birds. So I decided to put them in a gothic environment (with cathedral’s ruins in a shade of whitened bones. Charming, I know):

The front cover design:

The back cover illustration (probably you can notice letters DMG hidden in the central symbol resembling an angel – this symbol is actually frontman’s brilliant idea):

Some of the lyrics backgrounds:

And now I’m waiting impatiently to listen to their music...  

STEAMPUNK TOWN SQUARE

It’s been a loooong time since I’ve shared with you a “full size” watercolor drawing. 

Working on commercial illustrations, solving matters related to moving abroad and preparing online classes in designing fantasy architecture took all my time.

But now I’ve got a good reason for coming back to the blog! And the reason is a drawing commissioned as… (I bet you’ll never guess):

…a Birthday gift :) 

Actually, after completing a sketch, I decided to paint the cake on a separate piece of paper.

I was a little bit afraid, that I would need to make some editions in this part (and I needed indeed!). In such a case I would only need to change the cake without destroying the whole intricate work. That’s why the original looks in this way:

Yes, the base of the cake changed into a fountain. It suits a town square pretty well, isn’t it? 

Steampunk Playing Cards part 3.

Ready for the third (and yet the last) post about "Steampunk Plaing Cards" made for a Polish playing card company "TREFL"? It took me about two months to prepare the whole deck, so regardless your answer let me present clubs and spades!

Just in case you missed the previous two parts of presentation, here they are: part1 and part2.




Clubs were meant to refer to technological and scientific aspects of Steampunk. Strange, exaggerated glasses and lences are such a typical feature of Steampunk styliscs, that I couldn't resist choosing observatory for a building representing the ace of clubs.

According to my own guidelines jacks should be robots, which are technological achievements itself. But the jack of clubs should express the scientific atmosphere even harder. That's why I designed him as a mix of a microscope, oscilloscope and... some other parts.

From the 'Did you know' series: in Poland clubs are colloquially called "żołędzie" which means "acorns". That's why the jack of clubs is examining an acorn.

And now, last but not least: spades. Spades are related with exploring secrets of the sea (a distant echo of Jules Verne's 20000 Leagues Under the Sea). These pirates obviously know many sea mysteries:

What about the rest of the cards? Let them remain a mystery... unless someone has a deck in his/her hands :)

Steampunk Playing Cards part 2.

Time for the second portion of Steampunk cards created in an old school, traditional way (ink and watercolors). Today I'll focus on the red suits - hearts and diamonds.


"Hearts" were meant to represent the cultural and elegant side of Steampunk. Top hats, victorian fans and lace should be a good fit here. Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the Queen and the King of Hearts:

 

Now we are leaving salons to meet the darker side of Victorian era - decadence and pests especially decimating industrial areas. My favorite card - Jack of Diamonds as known as a "Pest Doctor" (in a steampunk style):

And which vehicle could represent this group better than a hearse? A steampunk hearse of course :D

I hope that these few illustrations managed to arouse your curiosity and that you'll be willing to see steampunk pirates and inventors in the next blog post!

The deck was created for a Polish playing card company "Trefl".

Steampunk Playing Cards part 1.

 “Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.”

George R. R. Martin, "A Game of Thrones"

For some strange and unexplained reason I'm working mostly on graphic designs and environment/architectural designs, which means that I'm using only pens/pencils and graphic tablet on daily basis.
As the time went by I began to suspect, that I'm going to forget how to make watercolor illustrations until one day...
a proposal from one of the leading Polish card manufacturer ("Trefl") came.
The offer concerned making set of cards in a Steampunk style. Handmade, watercolor technique, victorian aesthetics, steampunk subjects - PERFECT!
Some of my previously done artworks were also welcome to be part of the deck (ie "Train", "Steampunk Landscape").


Working process started with thinking (what a surprise!).

CONCLUSION 1 - Jokers could be presented as goblins, Aces as buildings, Kings could be portrayed as bearded guys, Queens as cute ladies (congrats Evi, how unusual) and Jacks could be robots. After discussion with the client  we decided to put vehicles on cards with numbers.

CONCLUSION 2 - each color could be designed as a different...how to put it right... subculture?
hearts would be members of the "upper classes" , clubs should be inventors/researchers fascinated with steampunk technical achievements, spades could be pirates or sea travelers and diamonds could be a charming mix of goths and dandies with a touch of decadence.

That's just a little sample of what you can expect to see in the deck. Next posts will reveal more :)

"History Lesson in Pictures"

"There are no innocent. There are, however, different degrees of responsibility."

Stieg Larsson, "The Girl Who Played With Fire"

At the end of the last year I got a quite noble task, namely preparing a series of illustrations related with the Baptism of Poland (2016 is the 1050th anniversary of this event). The National Centre for Culture (NCK) gave me a great deal of freedom regarding technique and subjects, with only one stipulation: "no controversial themes". When the condition "no controversial themes" was repeated for the third time during the preliminary talks, I began to ponder about what so controversial could appear there... but haven't come up with anything brilliant.

Anyway, here are some of these works. Ready for a short history lesson? Here we go!

"Unification of Tribes" - one of the main consequences of Christening of Poland was unifying few tribes and creating one land with one sovereign.

"Old Beliefs" - that's the sad one actually. Statues of ancient gods were being destroyed on a massive scale and most Slavic beliefs gone irrecoverably, as they weren't written down.

"Writing" -  Writing came to Poland along with Christian monks. Finally!

"Architecture and Art" - here on the example of St. Mary's Basilica in Kraków.

Medieval Battle

"Expanding Comfort Zone" part...next. One of the most important aspects of a good portfolio is showing an ability to draw various themes (do not confuse with variety of styles!). When browsing through my old portfolio I encountered medieval buildings, steampunk buildings, fantasy buildings and some existing buildings. In short - it was quite monothematic. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating. There were also guitars. Still, it was quite far from presenting diversity of themes.

My portfolio needed more people, more animals and more dynamism (nope, torn Ghost Ship's sails  flapping on the wind don't really count as "dynamic"). How about a battle scene? It usually requires participation of a group of people, right? Dynamism is also automatically incorporated. Let's add animals in the form of horses and we will have a complete package.

1. Tadaaaa:

Not oh-so impressive, I know. Luckily it's just my 2-minutes chaotic sketch. Hopefully the final result will be a little bit better.

2. Detailed pencil drawing. The more details are drawn with an easy-to-erase pencil, the less decisions need to be made during the watercolor part:

3. The background. It's almost invisible, but I prefer to keep it very delicate at this stage. Probably after painting these fighting guys, I'll add more contrasts or details to the background. In case of watercolors adding it's always easier than withdrawing.

4. The fighting guys and their brave steeds, stage 1. Tiny little details will be added later.         

5. The fighting guys and their brave steeds, stage 2. Tiny little details were made with brown and white opaque ink. 

As suspected also the background needed further treatment to form a coherent whole with the characters. New layers of warmer colors were added to the sky, the castle and the rest of the environment.

And they lived happily ever after...