SketchCrawl

Last Saturday was the 42nd World Wide SketchCrawl. Unfortunately, we weren't able to participate in that one, however it was recently brought to my attention that I never posted Billy's sketches from the 40th World Wide SketchCrawl, so to remedy that...:)

For the 40th World Wide SketchCrawl, we decided to make the drive to San Francisco (roughly 2 hours away from our hometown). We started our day with a group of sketchers at the Ferry Building.

Here's some photos from the day...

Sketching across from the Ferry Building in San Francisco

Group Photo

And of course, some sketches!

Outside the Ferry Building, sketch by Billy 

Of course, no SketchCrawl is complete without sketching another sketcher...

Sketch by Billy from Japan Town

Because we had brought our young daughter Lily along (she had just turned 1 years old) we had decided to eventually split from the group and we went to Japan Town along with taking Lily to the ocean for the first time, and finally to Union Square before heading home. It was a such a fun, full day. Looking forward to the next one!

And, if any Yuba Sutter area people are ever interested in joining us, give us a call! We'd love to have a local group!

urban sketching

property of Disney-Pixar / Up artists painting scenery

So several months back we were watching the special features for the Pixar film Up when Billy was inspired by one of our favorite artists, Ronnie Del Carmen, who had a mobile water coloring kit. Billy decided that he would like to have one, so after some quick googling to identify what Ronnie Del Carmen was using, we headed over to the only art supply store in our hometown, Michael's, to see what we could find.

While we could not find the exact same Winsor & Newton "field" kit, we did find something comparable and we ended up purchasing it (it didn't hurt that we also had one of thos Michael's 40% off coupons, either).

Since purchasing the compact water coloring set, we've been having lots of fun walking down as a family to our neighborhood park and enjoying some time outdoors.

A couple weeks ago Billy decided to paint our favorite home in the neighborhood...he plopped down in the park grass facing the home and began sketching...

We spent about an hour and a half playing at the park while Billy got everything inked in before we lost all our light and headed back home. The next day we returned for another hour or so while he began to add watercolor to it....

On the third and final day we came back and Billy completed the illustration. What was really neat was that when I had instagrammed a photo of Billy working on this, someone knew the woman who had grown up in this home (her father designed and built the home and still currently resides there) and it was actually someone that we distantly knew, and she was so sweet she actually reached out to us and offered to purchase the painting to gift to her father for Father's Day.

While Billy had initially planned on keeping this painting (we adore this home! The modern lines remind us vaguely of The Incredible's home), we were thrilled to see it go to the home owner himself.

Since picking up the compact watercoloring kit we've actually purchased a few more items to make painting on the go easier for Billy...I will have to share those fun purchases in a future blog post! 

All in all, it's been very relaxing to step away from the computer, or the iPhones, or the TV screen and go create some art in the great outdoors....even if this was just down the street from us. :) 

studio-behind the scenes

I thought it would be fun to show some behind the scenes photos of a recent custom 30th birthday invitation we created.

Of course just like any other project, invitations start with a client meeting/conversation so we can get an idea on the client's preferences and the scope of the project.

For these invitations, our client was throwing a 30th birthday cocktail, masquerade party for her sister.

She gave us a color palette of purple, turquoise, and blue.

The masquerade theme reminded me of this Miss Capricho illustration I had seen on Daily Candy.

We decided to do the illustration for the invitations using water colors because we felt it offered a whimsical feel while still being sophisticated.

Next, Billy hit the drafting table with PrismaColor markers in hand. He did a detailed thumbnail illustration of martini glasses and a masquerade mask.

After that, we scanned in the marker illustration and enlarged and printed it. Then back to the drafting table! Billy used the built in light board to illuminate the illustration so he could use it as a guide for inking and watercoloring a new illustration.

After the watercolor illustration was completed and dry, we scanned that in, preserved the colors we used by tweaking the curves slightly in photoshop, and voila! We had our piece for the invitations.
*illustration before any photoshop edits

Of course, after placing the image there was still finding proper fonts for the invitation and laying out the type....getting all the information properly laid out on a grid and kerning letter spaces...

I think its helpful to get to see what goes into a process for anything. More often then not people don't realize just exactly what is involved to get a finished product on something. And that probably can go for any industry, not just design and art.

Of course we have changed information to protect our client's privacy.

We hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes glance at the making of an invitation! If you'd like to commission custom invitations or a custom water color illustration, you can contact us through wwww.differentxdesign.com