Hand drawn lettering
June 7, 2013
We’ve got quite a collection of old Victorian wooden lettering and I’d already photographed a complete alphabet for inclusion in my iStock portfolio…
http://www.istockphoto.com/search/portfolio/911920/?facets=%7B%2225%22%3A%226%22%7D#600b398
and I’d also done a live trace of the photo in Adobe Illustrator, to give me a vector version, but I wanted to draw the lettering in Illustrator, complete with a bit of decoration and a drop shadow, to give me a period looking display font. The rules at iStock have changed recently to allow text in illustrations, so I dropped the theme of trees for a while whilst I put together some files with the new font. Here’s the drawing of the typeface…
and here are just a few of the ways I’ve used it so far……
The 100% Geek came from a label I had done for a collection of food labels I had uploaded to iStock, and I was trying to come up for ideas for new cards for our next craft fair at the end of June, so I just played around with some different versions which I showed to my daughter Lucy and her b/f Chris, and the Geek one came out of that experiment. We’ll have to see how and if it, and a number of other versions that have been suggested, sell. Here’s a reminder of where we’ll be selling next….
Craft fair thoughts and work in progress.
April 2, 2013
Last weeks fair at Colchester Arts Centre was a big improvement on the previous ( and our first) craft fair. A smaller venue but much more arty in feel, printmakers and illustrators much in evidence and we sold more, and a more varied selection, than at Ipswich, so we are now applying to other fairs, at The Minories in Colchester and Norwich Arts Centre.
Otherwise, back at the Mac, and also using pen and paper, to develop some new ideas and to finish off some old stuff. I’ve got 5 tabs open in Illustrator at the moment, here’s what’s on them….
This one’s finished, just awaiting an upload to my istock portfolio……
this one is a development of the previous one, the sort of conceptual image that can sell OK as a stock image….
this one just finished, a chopped up version of a silhouette I did previously, taken from a photo of my neighbours smart Trek road bike…….
and this, which is just me doodling around with some existing artwork of mine to try and come up with an interesting image. Not finished, but I’m quite pleased so far, and finally, playing around with pen and paper to draw another decorative bird, as we had some good sales of a similar image at the 2 fairs. Sometimes though, it’s hard to recapture the spontaneity of a successful image, and though this is OK, it’s not as good as the previous one.
The top right part of the image is the detail parts from the previous bird, so I can sample the colours off it. The bottom right part of the image is where I have just copied the detail parts of the main image, just to see if they would work alone as a bird without the black background, and, with a bit of work, they may do.
Craft fair thoughts…
March 28, 2013
Carrying on from my last blog, we survived the craft fair, it wasn’t as busy as we’d like but we did have some sales, very surprisingly the two actual drawings we took both sold, as these were the most expensive things on the stall. We also sold some smaller items, a few cards, a mug, a notebook. Nothing earth shattering but not a complete disaster and we probably took more than I would have dared to guess. BTW, some of the new items are available in the store on our website…..
http://www.johnwoodcockillustration.co.uk
At the end of the fair we were approached by another stall holder, who organises fairs herself, the upshot of which is that we have agreed to attend a fair in Colchester on Saturday……..
Our daughter Lucy and her boyfriend Chris have offered to do this one, so it will be interesting to see how it compares with Ipswich ( more buyers, we are hoping!). Anyone in Colchester, pop in and say Hi!
Here’s the Ipswich stall…….
New selling opportunities
March 14, 2013
After some pressure from our oldest daughter to make a greater effort to promote the items we sell on our website,
http://www.johnwoodcockillustration.co.uk
and to produce some more, we have signed up to a craft fair in Ipswich this Sunday. We have been to events organised by the same people before and liked the vibe, much more current and modern, not your average craft fair full of bad paintings and corn dollies. Carol especially has put in a lot of effort with the new products, and we have commissioned 3 new mugs too, so we have new prints, both framed and unframed, some great little animal brooches Carol has made, framed artworks, cards, all sorts of stuff.There are some pictures below of some of the new stuff awaiting packaging. We cut a little bone stamp out of an eraser to decorate the packaging with too. Hopefully all the new items will be available soon on the website shop too, so if anyone is in Ipswich this Sunday, we’re in the Grand Hall at the Town Hall, 10 am -4pm.
Technical drawing
February 5, 2013
When I was at school TD was one of those subjects I hated ( along with just about everything else, come to think about it), involving horrible stubby pencils with broken leads that always dropped out just as you’d achieved the perfect point, horrible cheap paper and wooden rulers and set squares that were covered in chips and knocks from their alternative use as makeshift weapons. I could never get on with it and always ended up with graphite stains and smears on my work. 40 years or so fast forward and I really enjoy drawing technical subjects, so when I was asked by long time clients Ivy Press to draw some exploded diagrams for a woodwork project book I was pretty happy, a nice chance to get away from having to come up with creative imagery and to be able to construct a nice grid and work out perspectives and just making everything look clean and tidy, all nice and clean and digital with no broken leads and rubbing out involved. Here’s just a selection of the images involved, nothing exciting but quietly satisfying.
Recent uploads
December 10, 2012
I’ve got a little gap in freelance work so I’m back to uploading images to my istock portfolio,
http://www.istockphoto.com/search/portfolio/911920/?facets=%7B%2225%22%3A%226%22%7D#600b398
Rather than write much I’m just going to post some newer images and let them speak for themselves. 
Ongoing work, stock images, new shop stuff blah blah……….
November 23, 2012
Rather ironically, as I’m currently illustrating a book called Blogging for Photographers,I was reading some text from said book, all about how bloggers start off with good intent then lapse into indolence and lack of direction. >sigh. Sounded a bit familiar so I decided to start just posting images as I do them ( well, ones I like anyway) and do away with the waffle, unless I’m in a waffle-ey mood, in which case I’ll, err, waffle. I mention new shop stuff above as I’ve opened a Cafe Press account and re-opened my Zazzle shop. As it takes a bit of time to get these populated and up and running I’ll post links at a later date, in the meantime here are a few recent images I’ve uploaded to stock, the keen eyed may notice I’ve gone back to owls, and I’ve also had a little run of new lighthouse images, for no particular reason other than I came across a sketch of one in a sketchbook of mine and as I hadn’t anything else to draw I took up the illustrative baton and ran with it.
