The Slow Life

It will be almost six months since I've been in Colombia and I'm still settling down. I'm not sure what my current status is job wise. I mean, I'm an artist and sometimes a freelance graphic designer but, let's say...money isn't coming easy. So, I work everyday in my studio, at home, wondering what meaning has anything I do, how valuable is a process of making something if it has no particular purpose, if it's not necessarily commissioned or paid. I think, or at least I try to let myself believe, I work for me, to keep track of my systems of working, to grow as an artist, maybe as a person. The positive thing is, every single thing I make seems lately like a big progress in this little world of my studio. But main goals and dreams still look so far away. Life seems to go really really slow even though is already end of January. London meant grabbing, working and searching. Bogota means waiting, observing and making the most of everyday life. Maybe that's what is all about after all, so I made a short story about it:

Click on image for detail

Hanna's Book (Sketches)

In the past I have only publish finished products but that only means I don't post anything for a long time whilst I'm busy on the current project. For me, one of the main goals of this blog should be being able to track the process of making each piece.
So from now on Ill be posting from the beginning to the end of a project in hopes that would be a way to reflect and understand the process and the work itself.

Hanna's Book (working title) has a more editorial concept, possibly thought to be reproduced one day.
Is basically a short story based on a very vivid dream I had right after I returned from England to my hometown Bogota. Because it was a very emotional subject to me, I felt it was necessary to retell the dream as a love story that hopefully everyone would relate to.

I really like writing (though it not always comes out well specially in english) so I started structuring the story-dream so I could then think about the layout and illustrations of the book:

After that i made I quick mock up to test text, images, spreads etc.



I then made the first illustration so I could set the guidelines for the style and feel of the images. This is the first one in raw:


And this after "treating" the image in Photoshop:


Then I started experimenting with text to decide what type of font to use for the rest of the book. i wanted to give it a vey personal feel so I created my own font thourgh this wonderful free online tool Fontstruct that allows you to create any kind of type and then download it.


So I made Hanna's Book that is available for download here and it's my own writing and it looks like this:

Still, i didn't use it because I found Cochin Regular a more suitable one that looks very much like I wanted it look:

I'm now working on the other illustrations (about 20 to go!) and I'll be posting more about it.

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Family Books

Presents I made for Christmas for mom, dad and my brother. I did my research and chose objects and ideas that captured the essence of them. I used drawings and pictures to make a digital collage that it was then printed to make this concertina books:






And this to give an idea of the size:

Happy 5 months in Bogotá (and Happy New Year)

And I can't fall asleep
Without a little help
It takes awhile
To settle down
My ship of hopes
Wait til the past lets by

It takes an ocean not to break
It takes an ocean not to break
It takes an ocean not to break

from Terrible Love by The National
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUhpzyun8SE