Hanbok Illustration, Korean Traditional Wedding and new Stickers!

I finally managed to update my Etsy shop with motives I'd wanted to create for a long time: Hanbok!

Story time:

For my Korean wedding, I wore a hanbok. We'd decided to buy one instead of going for a rental since there's things like Chuseok and Korean New Year where I can wear it again, (theoretically. It's a pain to put on.) so we wanted good quality and went to this UNBELIEVABLY BEAUTIFUL shop to choose fabrics and cuts and accessories and I still love everything about it.

I've been interested in the different styles, textiles and the historical evolution hanbok went through ever since.

Two of the illustrations are personal: The lavishly embroidered wedding hanbok (that one was on loan, worn on top of normal hanbok) and the simple red-green one which is inspired by what I wore.

Case in point. (And it's so hard to find wedding shots with only me pictured - which sounds very egoistical but hey, I'm trying to protect my family's anonymity :D)

So really, drawing hanboks? Great fun.

There's a total of six ladies, and I decided to make stickers with these because honestly, they're adorable. I have literally no idea what you'd ever need Hanbok stickers for, but who cares?
(worst sales pitch ever)

As always, my stickers are DIY self-cut ones. Since they're larger than my usual stickers, it's surprisingly easy to cut them - and since they're transparent, the occasional hick-up will be invisible anyway.

Size comparison of the original watercolor and ink drawings vs stickers. I really like how the floral patterns for these two turned out!

Two of the Hanbok ladies are available as mirrors in a card format. I chose the Gisaeng (on the right) and the pretty young lady.

The mirrors are made with stickers on a stainless steel surface, so they're sturdy and don't scratch easily - and since they're the same format as credit cards, they should fit into all kinds of purses and mobile phone cases.

Some additional sketches for Hanbok designs. Until now, I've mostly just focused on the Joseon period (which already features a huge variety of designs over the centuries), but since I've started working on a webcomic concept that's set a bit earlier, I'm looking forward to tackling the Goryeo period, too!

I'm also catching up with some Korean historical dramas / Sageuk. For research reasons. Of course. It's strange how I rarely manage to get past the mid-point of modern day dramas, but historical ones? I'll get totally invested. Maybe the themes just appeal to me more.

I didn't manage to get through Moonlight Drawn By Clouds (sketch above) but loved the pretty setting, costumes and the camera angles/lighting choices in the first couple of episodes. My all-time favorite has to be Queen Seon-Duk, Six Flying Dragons aaaand Arang, which is Fantasy but totally counts.

Thank you for reading this super short, very promotion-heavy blog post, but I'm trying to spread the Hanbok love here :) Hope you like the designs, and do tell me if you're into historical K-Dramas!

ILLUSTRATION: Coloring Books and Printables

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since I've blogged about art projects, and I can actually give a legit excuse for that. Most of the projects I've been working on were coloring books, so I had to keep things quiet until those actually went to print and on sale. (Spoiler: One's out! Yay!) Any other work was... scientific illustrations, complete with NDAs and not really blogging-appropriate aesthetics.

Fun times.

Luckily, Inktober came along to get me out of that nothing-to-show slump!

I'll do a full inktober recap once I've scanned every. single. thing. but for now, here's a focus on coloring pages I created during that month.

You can find free printable coloring cards at the end of this post, so scroll down if you'd like to try those.


But first, I wanted to introduce one of the coloring books I finished recently.

Coloring the cover was so much fun because COLORS. 

Created together with Author Francis Keene who came up with the idea of a farmers market themed coloring book, this is by far the cutest coloring book I've worked on! There's a total of 30 pages with illustrations ready for coloring, ranging from detailed looks at spices and teas to an entire market layout.

I can't really show you entire pages, so here's some close-ups!

There's book shops, antique shops...

DIY stalls with crafts ranging from pottery to woven rugs...

FOOD. EVERYWHERE.

Even a stall with Korean street food made it into the book!

I'm really happy with how this one turned out. If you'd like to get a copy of your own and look at the full images, you can order the coloring book "Whimsical Patterns - Farmers Market" on amazon.

I'd love to hear your opinion or see some colored pages!


If you'd like to start small with just single images, I've created two coloring cards you can print yourself:

One was a winter/autumn themed card. I like the idea of a season full of snow and pumpkin spice and soft cardigans, but then the reality of wet shoes, gray days and coldcoldcoldCOLD(!) hits.

The illustration thus shows winter how it should be.

It's a 12.5 cm x 18 cm (5x7 inches) format card that you can print on paper of your choice and color in. Have fun! :D

The second coloring card is all about National Novel Writing Month (which is going on right now and I'm procrastinating by blogging, but hey, I'm on track) - so books, more books and pretty writing utensils.

Same format as the winter card, but there's two options for you to choose from: A black-and-white version and a gray-and-white version. If you'd like to color in something with a softer look, give the gray lines a go.

These printable cards are only temporarily available for free here on the blog - I'll move them to Etsy in December since I want to start offering downloads over there.

Have fun coloring! If you've printed and colored one of these, I'd love to see a picture! Just mention it to me on Instagram (#evydraws or just directly @evydraws), Twitter as evyclocharde or over on Facebook evelynedraws.

My own colored versions will soon be back from the printer, so new textiles, stickers and hand mirrors are on their way!

Thank you for reading and I hope you like the cards and/or book! <3

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!

ILLUSTRATION PROJECT : SONG COVER "REFRESH"

Another one!

No, really, I hoped that I would be able to create another album cover in the future after I did the last one, but I wasn't expecting it to happen this fast!

어쩌면 아티스티 is coming out with a new single, and I was asked again to create the illustration for it. Still watercolors, still Jeju-themed, but a bit more playful.

The new single is travel-themed, but more light-hearted than Jeju Baram / Wind of Jeju.

You can take a look (and listen) at a part of the song. It's being used as the promotional song of Jeju Air, so it's been playing on television for a while before it was now officially released by 'Maybe An Artist'.

http://www.melon.com/album/detail.htm?albumId=2651785

And the promotional video for Jeju Air. Someone please give me some money for sharing this.

As for the illustration itself, I was given a free hand and could do whatever I wanted. As the music is playful and light, I wanted to give a similar feel to the drawings and the overall layout. In the end, I went with a grid-layout, reminding of pattern games like tetris or puzzles (I hope haha).

Featuring a selection of individual images that remind me of a, well, refreshing vacation on Jeju - with the famous oranges and clementines giving the color scheme.

These pictures kind of scream to be reused for stickers or post card motives, but I have to hold myself back or I'll single-handedly fund that printing company with all my orders recently.

Actually, I did a lot more illustrations, because I'd originally planned to make the pattern much smaller overall. That turned out to look way too convoluted and even plain unreadable. So here's some of the B-cuts!

Here's some sort of island that could be Sanbangsan, or just good ol' Jeju Island itself.

And of course the traditional houses of Jeju. There's a LOT of these around where I live ('cause I'm a country bumpkin) and they look plain adorable with their red, blue and green roofs.

MAKEUP ILLUSTRATIONS AND, finally, ARTPRINTS AND STUFF

If you've been following my blog since its creation not too long ago, you may have noticed how my initial 'daily drawings' evolved into makeup sketches and have gotten more detailed and elaborate along the way. Now I've finally gotten around to printing some of my works onto gift cards, textiles, hand mirrors and stickers!

Update 2016: You can find the prints and stickers in my Etsy Shop, too.

From the beginning, I had lots of fun doing these little beauty drawings. I started to use them for makeup reviews and, through this blog and instagram, even got several art commissions!

I wanted to introduce some of these projects to you. I'm experimenting with slightly different art styles for each of them, so hopefully this will be interesting.

First, my collaboration with Bisou Beauty Bar. Bisou is an online store, selling an interesting selection of both high- and low-end Korean brands in Canada.

Since we've started working together, I've created several product illustrations (for the cutest promotions ever??), as well as their business card and additional illustrations like the Pop-Up Shop below.

For these, I tried to make the overall feel of the illustrations more 'professional' - not as cutesy and simple as the ones that I'm using for my own reviews, but still colorful!

Then, I got two Blog Header commissions in short succession. For them to not look similar, they were created with a different atmosphere and, of course, color scheme in mind.

Shia from 'Shiaswelt' contacted me first, and to fit her new blog design I've included soft brown linearts with a mostly rose color palette. While the individual products are quite cute in their packaging, I tried to give the overall illustrations an elegant vibe!

She even uploaded some of the sketches and wips from this project! Way more dilligent than I am myself... haha...

Sooyoona from 'Something Beautiful' was up next, and I worked on both illustrations more or less simultanously. Her color preferences were blues and greens, and as we included not only makeup products, but a variety of other personal favorites of hers, the header became more and more colorful! The result was a playful, vibrant illustration with lots of whimsical details.

Check out both of their blogs to see the header images 'in action' and, of course, have a look at the blogs themselves! It was fun to work with K-Beauty Bloggers from my home country Switzerland and neighboor Germany! :)


So, what now? Now it's time for a little online store!

I really want to pursue this direction with my art. While I love drawing Manga and Children's picture books, and of course have to do my monthly share of bread-winning freelance illustrations, I really enjoy combining my love for drawing, watercolors and makeup!

Now that I'm done with printing, I'm really excited to show you some of the pictures!

I've made a Google Form to function as an online store - it's always been the easiest way to keep orders in one place!

So, I'll mostly do a blog sale here during November (I'll start shipping out items on the 16th, but orders can already be made!), pause during December, and then do the full-scale Etsy launch in January. (edit 2016: Well, it happened in February)

The stickers were made primarly because my cushion cases are old, battered and ugly, and I wanted to decorate them! There's been so many limited editions of cases released this  year in Korea, but I resisted hah...

...I'm really happy with how these turned out! :)

Additional, higher quality images of all products can be found in the order form!