Over on the science side of illustration...

Hello everyone!

January has blown by (as did that blizzard here on Jeju, taking all the warmth and my trust in nature with it) and this is only my second blog post.

This month was dominated by science illustration jobs.

Yes, there were some other commissions thrown in there, but they barely made a ripple in the sea of biology, botany, anatomy...

Maybe I should mention that science illustration - or 'Scientific Visualization' - is what I graduated in back in good ol' 2013. These jobs aren't coming out of the blue.

For example, my bachelor project on molecular depictions of Alzheimer's disease (trying to combine modern fields of science with traditional illustration media like pencil...) led to a recent commission of biology illustrations, focusing on cells and molecules. 

Cute little plant cell~

Or this infographic/drawing/chaos depicting a hurricane in pencil and digital coloring led to similar projects:

Pencil, A3 paper, and lots of patience in Photoshop...

... and now a very simple adaption of that style.

And an old study of the muscles of a hand (which was drawn based on sketches made during a very long, very disturbing session in a very cool and smelly part of the local medicine school) ...

... brought about a small series of anatomy art commissions.

Yeah. I just might have a tendency to enjoy grotesque (?) subjects, made up all pretty and colorful.

This rag-tag series of commissions made me realise several points I want to improve on. 

So, here's to my good intentions for 2016!

~ Draw more realistic illustrations

~ Rediscover media like colored pencils (I've been too focused on watercolors for a while, I believe... Still my favorite material, but I want to discover new techniques!)

Which means:

Project 1: I'll draw one realistic (...let's hope) portrait in my sketchbook each week, rotating media.

Or maybe some silly little studies like this~

Project 2: Tackle a series on local plants, typical for Jeju island or South Korea in general. Old-school botany illustrations, hopefully combined with some trips around the island to take pictures and make sketches. 

Started on the nutmeg tree - there's a nutmeg tree forest right around the corner from where I live!
"Bijarim"

I won't try my hand at anything like 'daily drawings' - I draw every single day, anyway, and creating additional sketches would just get in the way of my work. But one portrait a week sounds more than doable (and I can do some round-up blog post each month) and will help me improve anyway! 

Drawing plants is pure joy, and I've wanted to do something specific to Korea and Jeju for a while. 

Very pumped!

NEW YEAR, NEW ART - Closing the year 2015 and opening art commissions for 2016

Happy new year, everyone!

How can 2015 be over? I'm in denial and using a planner from 2015 that was too pretty to throw away unused. Will be confused about which day of the week it is for the whole year, but it's probably worth it anyway.

After a very hectic and kind of restless December, January is much more relaxing. I'm back on Jeju after having been away for over a month - don't misunderstand, I love traveling! Switzerland, Paris, Seoul, it was wonderful to be there, but traveling with all my art supplies and several commissions that have to be crammed in while catching up with all my friends and family is always tiring me out.

Yeah, yeah, as if eating and playing around was hard.

Also, my luggage was the strangest beast ever, with a mixture of interior design objects we bought on sale in Switzerland to take to Jeju, gifts from the Korean family to the Swiss family and the other way 'round, the mentioned art supplies, A2 paper, all sorts of food we can't find in Korea and absolutely had to stuff in (who doesn't want goat cheese in their handbag?) aaaand Christmas gifts aaaaaaand cookies from two grandmothers aaaaaaaaaaaand (for the trip from Seoul to Jeju) a CAT.

You talkin' about me? Miaow!

As for traveling:

It looks so peaceful...

... and beautiful...

...with food everywhere.

Everywhere, I said.

With a coffee here and there to change things up.

Food again. (Fondue!)

... You get the drift.

Rant over. I'm so glad to be home and a lazy bum again.

Like this.

As for blogging new year resolutions: I'm very motivated and very intimidated at the same time, haha!

On the beauty front, there are a lot of reviews lined up - especially for some of the newer makeup releases in Korea. Also, I FINALLY own a mirror that isn't a handmirror, so I can now use both hands for applying makeup and everything has gotten a lot less shaky, which makes me want to up my skills and maybe even do some tutorials. As if anyone could learn anything from me.

It's a game-changer.

On the art front:

I've started and finished a variety of things last year. 2015 was a turning point in my 'career', if you can even call it that. I'd done commissions before, but had mostly worked as a Manga artist since my first year of art school. While it was so fulfilling and fun to work on books, it also consumed all of my drawing time and while I have, by now, several books under my belt, I'm still a relative newbie to the whole 'freelancing' thing.

... a deserved (??) art haul
Seoul has the best art stores. My favorite paper!

After finishing my last book in spring 2015, I wanted to try something new. I started working as a freelance illustrator, accepting odd illustration jobs - and slowly, out of those, came projects and art styles I really grew to love. Children's picture books. Makeup illustrations. Blogging as a whole.

One of the makeup illustrations I enjoyed the most! Flatlay feelings!

And a LOT of freedom, all of a sudden. I didn't have to spend every day working on a seemingly never-ending number of comic pages. There were less creative decisions I had to wrack my mind with. I had time to meet friends, to eat dinner with my husband, to study up on my Korean. I even got a cat - something I could never have imagined while drawing comics, which are just too all-consuming.

My ONLINE SHOP is open again, too. So if you don't want custom illustrations,
there's prints and stickers and mirrors....

Of course, I miss it anyway. If 2016 brings me another opportunity to work as an author or manga artist, I'll grab it very, very tightly. I just don't feel quite ready to dive into it head-first all over again, as there are too many other things I love dearly and wouldn't want to sacrifice.

For the moment, I'll continue doing illustrations for smaller and larger companies (some stuff I can never even show you here because it's either copyrighted or would bore you to tears) and hopefully expand on my whole makeup artwork thingy I've got going on here!

You can find my commission rates for social media illustrations (icons, brand logos, personalized blog headers or youtube banners) and portraits in the custom art section of my Etsy shop.

Thank you for reading this very random, picture-heavy and kind of useless blogpost. I wanted to ramble a bit before getting my serious face on for the next year! Hope you have a great 2016 ahead of you!