Tag: Illustration

20230314

Today I stepped away from the abstract, organic, hand-drawn fill patterns I’ve recently done. I explored a more typical gift-wrapping paper pattern to familiarize myself further with Affinity Designer and because I wanted to try my hand at one.
Residents of Berlin might recognize the color scheme of the municipal garbage processing services, the BSR (Berliner Stadtreinigung). I can’t explain why, but I regularly find myself checking their website for open positions. I’m not particularly interested in driving garbage trucks. But when my musings about trying something new after 20 years of illustration move towards project management, transformative processes, and digital transition, I often wonder about the opportunities that garbage processing offers. I don’t know why, but that’s how it is. So I decided to base this paper pattern experiment on BSR vehicles and utilities.

20230225 – Zilpzalp

I really only chose to do a painting of this bird because I thought its name was funny. Also, it fits into the sequence. After doing the Starling illustration, I figured I might as well try to cover the seasons of a new year. The Great Tit for January and the Starling kicks off the song contest in February, Chiffchaff for march … and so on. I haven’t decided yet which bird I’ll do next.

20230223 – Star

The “Star | Common Starling” is one of those birds I have a love/hate relationship with as a visual person. I can never decide whether I like it or not. There’s no harmony between areas of rest and areas of detail. Its base color is black, yet it’s slightly iridescent. It’s somewhat “too much” for me. And all that detail makes it harder to appreciate the forms and shapes.

So for this exploration, I focused on capturing the glitter bomb impression I got from that bird.