A bouquet for you

Collaging, waxing poetic about seasons (again), making a mess, etc

Hello dear reader,

Happy April! As I write this, I am sitting in the back yard of my favorite coffee shop. The sun is shining, the birds are quite literally chirping, and I am under some sort of beautiful flowering tree. Spring in the city: thank god!

I’m sorry I don’t write these newsletters more. It’s not exactly like you’re waiting with bated breath to see my name in your inbox, but still! These take me quite some time to write, and it feels like there’s other things that I actually need to be working on. But this past week I had downtime, specifically the kind where I know things are going to get busy soon! Voila: the perfect time to play around and make a newsletter. Today I have something very seasonal for you: a sweet spring bouquet!

I feel like I’m always waxing poetic about seasons and weather. Very sappy. But! I think it’s because I spend a lot more time outside now that I am a full-time freelancer. When I was in college, winter was fun because I was busy with school and friends and was generally forced to be out and about. I even considered myself a Winter Person! Now that I work from home, the great outside has become a place to clear my head of everything happening inside. I start almost every morning with a walk no matter the weather. I read outside as often as I can. This year, when signs of life started sprouting on along my neighborhood route, I nearly cried tears of joy. For real!

When I sat down at a coffee shop to brainstorm newsletter ideas (lots of coffee shops, I know. See: being a freelancer) my mind drifted to those early harbingers of spring.

My next book project is in the early stages. I just finished sketching a whole new dummy to go on submission to editors soon (!) and, on top of that, I just got the go-ahead to start thumbnailing the interior of my current contracted project. The point being: oh my god this is a lot of sketching! What’s the opposite of sketching? Tiny collage flowers. Obviously! I haven’t shared any of the art yet for my next book yet, but I know there is going to be lots of collage, which means lots of practice. And hey, look at that! Perfect for a spring newsletter! I pulled out my new camera for this. Get ready. Here we go.

I keep all my collage materials in this little drawer (I should probably find a better system). Old tins work great to hold little bits and pieces of scraps. The vintage espresso one was a gift from my sister, Serena. My favorite!

I first got interested in collage when I was a college student. To my absolute frustration, my life as a illustrator (albeit fledgling) has centered around two words: loosen up! I heard this over and over and over again from professors, and the worst part is that they were always right! I’ve generally chilled out enough as a person that my work has gotten looser, I think? But my favorite part about collage is that it invites mistakes, mess, and energy while still giving me an element of control. I can work with scraps and weird shapes, but it’s not final till I put the glue down. Contained chaos! I like that I can try again and again and again to find a weird little shape that I like.

I have a personal vendetta with glue sticks. They’re messy and gross and I feel like they never really stop being sticky. Right now, I’m into this Yamato paste, along with Zig glue pens. The paste takes a beat to dry which gives me time to move things around. And no stickiness when it’s set!

I like the effect of painting in/over/around collage pieces:

I didn’t love this composition. But that’s the beauty of collage: try try again!

Forsythias remind me of spring, too. Where I grew up, we have a big forsythia that my mom lovingly called “the jolly green giant.” It blooms every year into these happy little flowers. My sisters and I loved them because they look like weird bananas. Fun shapes to play around with!

I liked these two compositions. One like a bouquet, and one that’s a single branch:

I toyed with the idea of setting these on a green background. They looked so great against my cutting mat! But the point of this was to keep things simple and fast(ish). White is easy to edit. Decision made. Here’s where we landed! For transparency, I’m including a picture of my messy desk, ha.

This newsletter is getting long. I should end things here. But! Let me go into adjunct mode for a second and show you how I scan + clean up my pieces. Everyone has their own method, but this sort of knowledge can feel opaque and hidden. Here’s my personal preference.

When I scan, I use my Epson v550. It’s a pretty small and you can usually find them for under $200 second hand. The Epson Perfection series is pretty popular for illustrators, so I feel good recommending the series if you’re in the market for a scanner.

I scan my files as 48-bit tiffs, 600dpi. 300dpi or above is fine, but 600 gives me flexibility to zoom, blow things up, etc. To help my scanner pick up a full range of colors, I go into the advanced settings and detailed adjustments set everything back to the basics. The scanner wants to be helpful and adjust the range of data it takes in, but I would rather have full control and edit that myself in photoshop! These are the settings I use:

The resulting scan is kind of lame looking, right? But that’s fine with me: none of the colors are blown out and all the detail and texture is there.

I work nearly 100% by hand… I missed the Procreate train and am too stubborn to catch up. Unfortunately, I’m also a control freak! As such, photoshop is my best friend. There’s a thousand ways to get the effect you want when editing your work. I rely heavily on color correction and frankenstein-ing things together. I use adjustment layers, the patch tool, stitching together things with layer masks. Everyone has their methods! As an illustrator, my work’s final destination is not a gallery wall. It lives on pages and on screens. To me, none of this is cheating. It would be silly to not use the tools available to me! But that’s a whole other newsletter. These bouquets were just studies and a way to keep my making while I’m working on sketches. Here’s where I landed:

That’s all from me! Go out and smell some spring flowers. Oh, and collage too!

XO,
Veronica