Shizucor » Design

The Daily Challenge is On – Again

Corinne — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 04:53:58 +0000

After receiving encouraging comments from my previous blog post, I’ve decided to continue participating in daily365 even though I’ve missed many days — okay, one whole month! In this post, I just wanted to showcase stuff I’ve done recently:

For day 73, I continued working on the logo for my husband’s ceramic business. He sat down with me whilst I worked on this so I had a lot of input from him. I may tweak it some more but he asks not to make any major changes. If you’re interested, you can see the sketch and grayscale version.

I recently watched Lost in Austen and I loved Mr. Bingley. So, I decided to paint him for practice. Below is from days 95 and 96.

Tweaked the previous Shizucor logo. I tried to see what it looked like with no gradients and without overlapping letters.

On day 100 of the daily365 challenge, I thought I’d continue painting Mr. Bingley. I will finish this someday!

I had sketched out the alphabet based on the square. For day 101, I started drawing them in Illustrator. I’ve only gotten as far as “K” but I will continue working on this just for fun.

Throughout this week, I’ve been focusing on pixel art by creating a mushroom house. I’ll post my pixel progression this Monday.

If you’re taking part in the daily365 challenge or just create art on a regular basis, share a link to your favorite piece(s)! I’d love to see them. :)

daily365 FAIL

Corinne — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 01:41:31 +0000

Back in December, I posted about the daily365 challenge. I was really excited about this challenge; it would give me a chance to flex my creative muscles. I started strong in January but after a few days in February, I stopped altogether.

Before I discuss my blatant failure in this challenge let me show a few of my creations.

daily365 Logo

Me as a Teen

Painting the Eye Practice

See the rest of my digital creations at my daily365 gallery on Deviant Art. My sketches on paper have not been scanned.

My failing to continue this challenge is not a mystery to me. I know exactly why I’ve stopped:

I lack motivation.

Maybe I’m not passionate enough about designing or drawing everyday but I really do enjoy doing both! I can’t say, “I’m too busy.” I do have work and daily chores to do but I’m not short on time.

You, dear creative reader, may be able to help me. What do you do to motivate yourself to make art for you? Your input and advice is certainly appreciate!

Daily Photo, Design & Drawing For 2010

Corinne — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:57:25 +0000

I just recently read an article over at Smashing Magazine titled Design Something Every Day! written by Jad Limcaco. He challenges us designers, artists, photographers, writers and even developers to design or create something everyday for at least 15-20 minutes starting 2010. I think this is a wonderful challenge!

This year, I occasionally created something for fun and practice but I feel like I need to do that more often! For 2010, I’ve decided to do 3 different things:

Participate in Project 365: I’m no photographer but I still enjoy snapping pictures.
Draw something everyday
Design something everyday

Ideas

I’d like to improve my knowledge of anatomy so I’m going to draw a body part for a whole week once a month.
Draw a small object from life
Draw a pose from PoseManiacs.
A popular suggestion: Design a typography poster using a quote.
I love Jessica Hische’s Daily Drop Caps and I love pixel art so I’m planning on creating small pixel letters (hopefully) as beautiful as Jessica’s!
With regards to web design, I’m thinking of designing a business card site in different styles like grunge, minimal, retro and so on.

Those are just a few ideas I have in mind. Please help a girl out and suggests some design and drawing activities!

Resources

If you’re taking on this project but have no idea what to do, by all means try my ideas. Below are a few websites to help and inspire you:

101 Projects for Artists and Illustrators by Dani Jones.
Illustration Friday: Every Friday a one word topic is posted for participants to illustrate. Fun!
Done Daily Design Workout: This was for 2008 but this is a good place to go to for some ideas.

Are you going to challenge yourself to create something everyday? Have you done something like this before? If so, how successful were you in keeping up?

Your Album Cover #2

Corinne — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:34:28 +0000

I thought I’d give this exercise another try!

Once again, here are the instructions:

You’re making an album cover for a band. All the info you need is as follows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random: The name of the band is the article you land on.
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3: The name of the album is the last four or five words of the last quote on the page.
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days: The picture you must use is the third picture on the page.

Photo credit: C Ray Dancer

Your Album Cover

Corinne — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:53:40 +0000

I found this neat Photoshop practice from the CMD+Shift Design blog.

Here’s the brief:
You’re making an album cover for a band. All the info you need is as follows:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random:
The name of the band is the article you land on.
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3:
The name of the album is the last four or five words of the last quote on the page.
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days:
The picture you must use is the third picture on the page.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Photo Credit: Bidûni Ta’lîk

Weekend Inspiration: Chocolate Mail

Corinne — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 02:17:36 +0000

Chocolate Mail stamps are not edible but it’s at least tasty when you lick them. Toby Ng designed stamps that look like a bar of chocolate. They come in three different flavors: Dark, Milk & White. Personally, I’d go for the Dark Chocolate. MMMMM

See more of Toby Ng’s work in his website.

Weekend Inspiration: French Paper and Me

Corinne — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 01:29:57 +0000

I got these from French Paper:

These were designed by Charles S. Anderson Design. The papers are excellent and high quality! Plus, French was kind enough to send me 10 large sheets of Speckletone paper. What am I going to do with them?!

Anyway, I’m definitely buying from them for my paper needs. You can view more designs printed on their paper at French Paper’s Sample Room. Beautiful stuff!

Typographic Self-Portrait

Corinne — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 03:26:04 +0000

Our first project in Typography 1 was to create a self-portrait using the letters of our name and the font we chose from Dafont which was Nostalgic. What a fun project this was!