Sunday 24 May 2009

New post, fresh start

As i mentioned at my last port, i was making a new blog especially for Alice. Well, i decided to focus more on the new one as it s more well structured and concetraded and slowly abadon this blog and leave it just for refrence to older work i had.

This is the new blog if anyone is interested in checking it out..


http://alicesforbiddenforest.blogspot.com/

Sunday 10 May 2009

Alice's Forbidden Forest: Redirecting..

I am currently working on a new blog, especially for Alice's Forbidden Forest, therefore forgive me for not posting much of anything lately...

Tuesday 28 April 2009

Once i ve been to Paris..

























Notes on the photos:
Apples:This was not the best photographic image of the apples but i used this one anw cz i think it is more interesting the assocation with the text. Some may say it s expensive, some may say it s alright but everyone will say "well, this is Paris!".
Sunglasses: This was the display of a fancy (sun)glasses shop which i found their arrangement quite interesting.
Graffiti: The one thing that always intrigues me and i ll always look to photograph-especially in other countries- is street graffiti. It is an "undercover" statement of that country's culture and notion- what you object to is what possibly exists.
Portraits: The bnw portrait even tho is not 100% on focus i still find it an interesting composition with the alteration of the lights by the bnw setting
The coloured portrait i took it using another camera, Canon EOS


Sunday 12 April 2009

Greeting card










A small dummy of a greeting card i made as a break from the constant work on the children's book i m working on.
The printing results werent as satisfied as i wanted the colours to be vibrant than what was on paper..
It s a series of images which depicts the process of birth. A butterfly laids it s egg on the ground, a caterpillar is born, along with it murshooms start to show. The caterpillar turns to a cocoon, musrhooms getting bigger. Cocoon turns to a butterfly where it sits on the fully grown mushrooms.

these are the pics after turning them to CMYK and it was them when i realised the importance of working in the first place with those rather with RBG and then turn them to CMYK and their pallette differences.

Saturday 11 April 2009

Back..

No i havent forgot my blogspot nor lazy and didnt upload anything for so long. Quite the opposite. I ve been so busy i couldnt find time to actually upload some of my work.
Well, these are the first 4 pages of Alice's Forbidden Forrest without the text. I ve already started contructing the bnw dummy with text etc and now i m doing the final colouration of the images.
I know that the drawings have their weacknesses such as the figure drawing and its consistency with its features and etc, but for now these are my limitations to this. I ve never drew children before therefore it was extremely difficult for me to understand the porpotions of their body and their face's characteristics in order to make them to look actually children and not adults with a small body. I did practise a lot but let's face it: i can't turn into a children's figures drawing expert in just a couple of weeks.
Anw..as i said, these are the first 4 coloured pages of the book without the text. Hopefully later today i will upload photos of my dummy as well.

Wednesday 11 March 2009

Finally a Final!

Finally a Final!
The more i saw the previus ones the more i was not pleased with the result so i made one more small change and now it seems "final" to me (i put it in brackets because i cannot know if by tomorrow i'll decide that it needs more changes)

Tuesday 10 March 2009

Alice's Forbidden Forrest: sketch 1:coloured

I finished it today, tho at the end i rushed it cz i got reaally tired. After finishing it i wasn't quite pleased so i made other 2 colour variations. Well, sort of..i put them in an order so it looks as if the colour gets brighter where i actually worked vice versa. At the 1st attempt i found the colours too bright and not fanctioning well so i started slowly desaturating and diconstracting the image until it fitted a bit more.



Monday 9 March 2009

Alice's Forbidden Forrest: sketch 1

I was planning on uploading the B&W and the coloured and make a comparison between the two of them, but since the coloured one takes so long to finish i decided to upload the B&W anw..



She found herself surrounded by many mushrooms. As she walked through them, a little voice called up to her.
“Where are you off to little fairy child? A pretty creature like yourself should not wander in such a place like this.”

Alice looked up. A big spider was sitting on a mushroom head,
Looking down at her
With a big smile that filled her whole head

Saturday 28 February 2009

Alice's Forbidden Forrest, the story

It was very late
And Alice was gοing to bed.
She had a very tiring day
Trying to get away
From that bizarre Wonderland.
She creates in her mind eveyday
She was glad that all was done,
and had found herself back.
But tonight, her spirit, restless as it was, could not settle
Into a nice night’s sleep.

She moved around and changed sides.
She even counted ships in her sleep.
But nothing seemed to work.
She opened her eyes and looked at the time,
It was past twelve and still couldn’t sleep.

Then a sound was on the air, unsimilar to any other night sound she ever heard before,
She headed down the stairs and heard that sound again:
“Who’s there?”
No one answered, but a light wind instead whispered in her ear:
“Come with me”
“Come with me”

She wasn’t sure what to do
For her mummy every night strictly says:
“Stay in bed. Bad people and sneaky monsters come out at night, waiting to take you away”
“Come with me” the soft wind whispered once again in her ear.
She was not sure, but she was one curious little child. A very curious one indeed.

Quietly she followed the soft wind and went out the back door.
She looked at the tall grass and the old house, but nothing seemed to be there.
She lay in the grass and stared at the starry sky.

A firefly was playing “catch me if you can “ round her head,
Cheerfully, challenging.
She tried to catch it but she was too slow to even touch it.
She whipped and wishd she could fly like it.
Strangely enough the firefly stopped.

But as it stopped, all around Alice started growing taller. Or was she getting smaller?
She found herself surrounded by a grass jungle, lost.
She looked around, nothing seemed the same but the starry sky.

Then a new sensation filled her heart,
As she discovered on her back
A lovely pair of butterfly wings.

Alice walked around, jumped up and down playing with her new pair of wings.
Along her game she heard the sound once again.

She climbed a rock to find where it came from
Instead she saw, at the opposite side, there was a huge sitting frog.
“My, my, what a beautiful butterfly you are my little one.
I’m old and I’ve got fuzzy eyes. Come closer so I can see your beauty better”

Alice sat on her rock and took a long look at this peculiar frog.
“Nanny said frogs eat the little hasty butterflies who believe their fluttering words. I’d rather stay here where I am. Or better still, I shall leave you and keep enjoying my game with my lovely new wings”
“Lovely new wings erh did you say? My, my, you must be a new fairy child, and not a common butterfly. My apologies, my young fairy lady. As I said, I am old and my eyes are playing tricks with me. You have you’re whole life yet to come.
But be aware! Fairy children, pure as you, should be very careful. For since you go to the forest, you shall never to return home!”
Alice said a “thank you” for the old frog’s advice, but felt afraid and went as far away she could.

She continued to hop up ‘n down,
On rocks and ground
Flying round, feeling so proud

But soon enough she go tired and sat to rest.
As she rested, that sound reached her ears once again.

Her curiosity, growing bigger and bigger made her forget
The words and advice given to her before .
She stood outside the forest.
Her wings trembled to go in there but she was s curious indeed
She bravely entered the forbidden forest.

It was so different and dark.
All trees grew taller, covering every single star.

After she climbed a root, she was in a mushroom forest.
There were big and small, fancy and dull

As she walked through them, a little voice called up to her.
“Where are you off to little fairy child? A pretty creature like yourself should not wander in such a place like this.”

Alice looked up. A big spider was sitting on a mushroom head,
Looking down at her
With a big smile that filled her whole head.

“I am only following a sound..”
“Aaah...the sound...” she said with a smile now bigger than her face.
“I cannot hear it myself
But many children like yourself
Passed by searching for this sound.
If you want to find the source of the sound you should go this way,”
“Why should I trust you? You re a spider and spiders are not creatures to be trusted. Nanny said so.”
“Oh, you hurt me deeply now. I am merely an old-crooked spider with no teeth. I can only taste the lovely flesh of the little lost flies, not children like yourself. You are not for me. I have no reason to lie to you. I have no interest. I only tried to help you purely out of good will.
But you look like a good kid- I like you and I’ll give you a wise piece of advice. Go back while you still can. Hihihihiii...” the spider laughed hysterically.

Alice terrified ran away, but she did not see where she was heading to.
She found herself lost, wandering between
haunted trees and weathered roots.
She could not stop feeling as if she was being watched.
She looked around but there was nothing she could see.
She stopped.
She was cold and alone.
She was scared and kept feeling she was being watched.

Ready to give up, the sound came into her ears again. Louder than ever.
Her heart patted so fast it would burst out of her chest.

She ran and ran. She climbed dangerous cliffs.
Her dress turned shabby, her wings were torn, her hands and legs bled.

She reached the top and there it was!
Finally, the Source!

Oh, how beautiful it was
A flower nothing like the others, like nothing she had seen before!
It shone as a star, it warmed as a hug, red as fire. And the sound louder than ever, made perfect sense,
With the beauty of the Source!

Alice overwhelmed, just stood there and watched.
Watched and watched. She forgot everyone and everything. She even forgot who she was.
She only saw the Source.

Days came, nights passed, but nothing made any effect
On her.
She just stared at the Flower, astonished and overwhelmed.

She never realised, as time passed, that she was turning herself into one with the other tree statues around
Who seemed to be watching, themselves, the flower.

A flame-colour bird who always watched day after day (all the lost children that passed by in searched for that sound) sang for her:
“..building its own fairy world
Step by step
The roots will take over the little child
For ever last
From what used to be its home..”

Friday 20 February 2009

Some more experimentation..







I finally decided that for my children's book story will be Alice's Forbidden forest. I thought of having as a drawing signature the trees with the element of haunted. So, i went into experimenting with different techinques and materials, mostly inks and photocopies, to creat the element of "haunted" and clistophobia and base on this the structure of the "forbiden forrest".
I must admit that i was more pleased with the rough experimentations rather than the "final" piece i produced. The roughts reserve the more sketch-y and detailed character and the wash ups just add to the drawing while the "final" feels sort of heavy, busy and the detail pattern i wanted to have as an element is almost lost because the image is so dark. Nevertheless, this was an experiment henceforth learn from it.
I focused more on actual material experimentation rather on photosho so here i includedd just the photoshop experiments which pretty much this is what they are- and there basically are jsut colouring experimentations.

Note: for some reason my pc doesnt upload correctly the images. i tried to change it but it s beyond my understanding, since when i open the image is with its proper colours. so the images belown are not quite excactly how they really look like their colours..