Release the BEAST! (From the east...)

A lot has happened here in the past month or so, I've had my stand at craft markets, been to conferences, and have been getting out and seeing people, which makes a nice change from working at home in isolation. It's good to get out and connect with other people.

One of the most exciting things lately came from a twitter conversation and ended up with a group of us starting an illustration collective here in Norwich.  - BEAST!

BEAST! are:
Grace Sandford
Karl Newson
Kellee Rich
Mark Standbrook
David Hurtado
Me (Fiona Gowen)


We gave ourselves  a little project to get started on first, put all our names in a hat, and drew a beastly portrait of the beast who's name we pulled out. It was a super fun project, and there's some awesome drawings!

You can follow us on twitter here @BeastNorwich
We have a website HERE
and a Facebook page HERE

We've been working hard on some christmas cards, and have chosen a charity (The Hamlet Centre) to donate all the profits to. They're currently at the printers being finished off, and we should have them available to buy in all our etsy shops, and at local craft markets soon!

Hooray for collaboration!

'Yesterday's World' Map - Behind the scenes.

Earlier this year, I was approached by the lovely chaps at Creative Sign Co. to produce a visitor map of 'Yesterday's World' - an attraction/museum based in the sunny seaside town of Gt Yarmouth. It's a fab collection, showcasing old packaging, tradesman's tools and lots of other weird and wonderful objects. They have a great display of old cameras and even an apothecary too.

Now the project is all finished, I thought it would be nice to share some of the process here.

After a couple of site visits, conversations and hundreds of reference photos, I got to work sketching out a plan of the building, the rooms and areas both upstairs and down, onto squared paper.

Once both floors were planned out, with everything lining up, I transferred the drawing onto isometric paper, where I started working upwards, plotting in the walls and walkways and making sure the map was clear and easy to read. 

I altered the plan on both floors to accommodate the 3D nature of the map, ensuring all areas could still be seen. Once the detail was all roughed in, I scanned it and dropped the drawing into a rough indesign layout and sent it off for approval.

After a couple of inevitable tweaks, I was able to start inking up the final drawing. Using the lightbox I traced over the rough in ink, with crisp lines, adding in more detail as I went. Once inked the drawing was ready to be scanned again, imported into photoshop and coloured up digitally.

For the colouring, I used solid colour layers with vector masks for each of the large areas - the floor, walls etc. This makes the colours far easier to alter once it's all coloured up. When the base colours are all down, I started painting in the detail, shading etc and when finally happy with it, I dropped it into the indesign layout again, and sent it off to the client for approval.

Once approved, I made the file 'print ready' and sent it off to the client.

It's brilliant seeing the illustrations you've worked on in their final environment, in this case, printed as 2x massive panels, to be placed both inside and outside of the attraction, as well as on a printed map and as a downloadable file from their website. This was one of my favourite jobs so far and I had a lot of fun and learned a lot whilst doing it.

The final project can be seen over in my Behance portfolio HERE

Illustration Friday - Robot

Just a little Illustration Friday post - I've not taken part in a while. This week's theme - Robot

I actually did this a while back for a friend in Norwich. It was a t shirt design for one of his colleagues. It features a few Norwich landmarks - the Norman castle, and cathedral, and also the iconic market awnings.

TTS Warrior ©Fiona Gowen

Shirt proposal

My First Few Craft Fairs

At the beginning of the year, I set out to get involved in a few craft fairs.

It's been something I've been wanting to do for several years, but although I've had bits up on Etsy for a while now, I've not got around to taking the plunge into the world of craft markets. It seemed like a bit of a daunting prospect, to begin with. 

A few months on, and I've now had my stand at around four local events, with varying degrees of success. Some have gone better than others, I think that will always happen though, depending on the day, the location, and the weather. My stand has grown each time, and I'm happier with it each at every new event.

Each event has been a bit of a learning curve for me. Seeing how people react to my products, seeing what people are buying, and what they're not. It's really very interesting. 

I'm constantly coming up with ideas for new things to sell, and am gearing it all up to centre around my Illustration, maybe with the odd crafty bit creeping in, but mainly Illustration. I'm looking forward to expanding it, with some larger pieces. 

It's an exciting project, and I've met some lovely fellow stallholders, and some fab customers. There's still a lot to learn though, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Clutter city!

I'm dead excited about being included in the spring Clutter City Market this year at Norwich Arts centre. There's going to be lots of local artists and craftspeople selling their handmade goodies! 

If you're about in Norwich on Sat 20th, then pop in and say Hello!

Illustration Friday - Tree

Illustration Friday - Tree

Illustration friday - Shy - 2/11/12

Illustration Friday - Shy

Frankfurt Illustration frenzy

In September, I was commissioned to produce a set of 104 smallish illustrations for various projects going off to be showcased at Frankfurt book fair earlier this month. It was a daunting project with so little time. But I managed to pull it off!