Make Art That Sells GTS Submission

This August, I participated once again in the Global Talent Search held by Lilla Rogers Studio. The first round assignment was to design an art for a pair of sneakers, owned by a young woman named Antoinette. Antoinette lives in Brooklyn, rides her bike daily, and loves vintage. The top fifty designs were selected from a pool of 1000 to advance to the second round of the competition. Mine was probably #51!  I enjoyed thinking about Antoinette’s apartment in Brooklyn, and about all those old vintage items which she loves. Congrats to the top 50!

My manifesto

Last week, I submitted my work for a competition held my Lilla Rogers Studio. The design goal was a visual manifesto of artistic intentions and views. My original idea was to animate some common inanimate but related to art objects, but only one brush was born as a character. It was a lot of fun to develop the lettering, especially of the quote. I will keep my fingers crossed!

Global Talent Search

This year I decided to participate in the Global Talent Search (GTS) held by Lilla Rogers Studio. I guess this is the second year that the competition has been running. The winner will receive representation from Lilla Rogers Studio for two years, which means the artist/illustrator will receive many  opportunities for licensing their work with decor, stationary companies, and textile factories.  Of course, it is a dream of many artists! The competition has several rounds. On August 26^th the semi-finalists will be announced. I cross my fingers!
 

Assignment. The theme for the first round was ‘little terrarium’ for the wall art. We could interpret that topic in any way we would like to, to use any materials, and to work in any style we want. At least one word should be written on an illustration. The assignment gave us a lot of freedom, and we were given two weeks for that round – which is great.

I just published my second post  here about terrariums about a month ago. I made them not for the competition but just for my personal project. Honestly, I was a little bit surprised and disappointed by the theme, but I guess terrariums are trendy! But my GTS project turned out absolutely in a different way and I am so happy with the little illustration!

Idea. Terrariums remind me of a small world. They are so whimsical. Or they could be whimsical. I decided that a terrarium is a good place for a fairy tale, especially a fairy tale which happens in the woods. I have chosen the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, or known also as Little Red Cap (yes, that brutal story where a mean wolf swallows a grandma...). I tried my best – I changed the plot: the wolf is charmed by a little girl and changed his mind to swallow a sick grandma and... happy ending! I placed a terrarium on a book to show the connection between the book and a magical world in the terrarium. Also, it solved the problem with the text – I just added two words FAIRY TALES on a book binder. Here is my work:

Process. This time I made my illustration digitally. I made a couple of sketches by hand just to develop the idea. That’s why I completed the illustration pretty fast. 

Submission. The requirement was to submit the work as low as 72 dpi. Honestly, my illustration lost some sharpness, some details and textures. I think it is too low resolution to present a work. I don’t know how other people dealt with that to improve the quality of the image and at the same time to stay within the 72 dpi limit. 

Feedback. I think the competition is really very interesting. I am looking forward Tuesday not just to know my result but to see the work of other artists. It gives a lot of inspiration and also helps me to grow, to compare your work with other awesome artists. It would be so nice to be at least in the second round to have one more assignment to work on.

Lilla Rogers Studio is offering an online course Make Art That Sells (Part A&B). I guess, most of the participants of the GTS are the students of that course. I heard very good feedback about the course but unfortunately this is very costly. 

UPDATE: Nope, I didn't make a cut. Will try next year again.  Here you can enjoy the top 50 and the gallery of all 999 is here. So many wonderful works entered the competition this year!  Congratulations on semi-finalists and good luck everyone! XOXO

Hello!

After much hesitation, I think it is good time to start this blog.  I have couple of introductory words... I changed several occupations in my life trying to figure out what I really want to do, what I am able to do, and what really makes me happy – the conclusion is: I am excited to draw animals, characters, and flowers. I like to draw by hand using traditional media, as well as to use digital media to apply textures and to mix things. 

I love photography too. I think it is magic. I can spend hours taking photographs and editing the images. But this is another story – probably a story for another blog. 

Recently I feel in love with textile design – this is such an inspirational field though sewing is not my strong side. Everything started, of course, with Spoonflower.com. The opportunity to see your design printed on an actual fabric is so fascinating that after the discovery of that website I jumped into my first textile design and participated in the Fabric8 competition held by Spoonflower and Robert Kaufman Fabrics. I borrowed in the library A Field Guide to Fabric Design written by Kimberly Kight and the Fundamentals of Printed Textile Design by Alex Russell (I hope to write some reviews about these books in the future – they are so good!) and built my first repeat pattern ever. After that I leant that Spoonflower.com provides some design tools to build the repeat automatically. A little bit too late, though I enjoyed my process and now I know everything (almost everything!) about half-drop repeat! I made it into the Top 100 and I was very pleased with the result.  I thank you everyone who voted for my design and supported me! So, it was a good push to start this blog finally. Below is a flyer with the Cosmic Voyage design and also some sketches of bunnies which originally I wanted to use for an Easter greeting card.

I hope not to give up, to learn a lot, to submit something cool and creative regularly! I hope to make some friends too! Thanks for reading and come over again!