| And now we resume normal programming… | 11:08 pm, March 6th, 2012

Hi all! Long time no update – sorry for the lack of bloggage here. I went AWOL last month because I went on a short holiday to Europe with Cam! But we’re back now and I’m just getting back into the swing of things. I’ll post a little update on that later (promise!), but as of now…

I want to continue updating this site with more things. I have come to the realisation, however, that some things on this site might need to be rejigged a bit. Actually, a lot of it. Like my portfolio which requires a million clicks to get you where you want to go. As well as some of the downloads page, and… well… everything. I’m going to start working on a new layout and I already have an awesome background I want to use. It’s just a matter of finding time to design a new layout – and that’s the problem. Right now I’m pretty busy with work and errands here and there, all the while attempting to finish King’s Bounty (I haven’t even beaten the second boss yet) and Diablo II with Cam. I know, I know. THEY’RE JUST GAMES. But omg they’re pretty epic right now. I need some discipline.

I also want to start making use of my Etsy account this year. I don’t actually know what I’m going to sell yet but it’ll all be handmade I think. Well hand designed at least. It just involves so much planning and designing and reworking not to mention pricing and more planning. I think it’ll eat up a lot of my time. We’ll see how it goes though, it’s still early days and I have a few ideas floating in my head at the moment.

I’ve been meaning to attempt to learn how to use my tablet too but that hasn’t been going so well. I haven’t actually taken it out of the drawer since I failed so horribly last time. Er… yeah… we’ll see what happens once I clean my drawers out. I also need to sell some stuff on eBay. Sigh… So many things to do, so little time… C’est la vie.

| Greenwashing Parade | 9:17 pm, January 27th, 2012

Hi all – Long time no update!! I know it’s been pretty quiet over here since my 365 postcard project ended….that’s not to say I haven’t been busy however, ha ha. 

Anyhow, there are a few things I aim to do this year on this website, some of which are:

• Update this layout (Cam and I have something pretty cool in the idea factory…we’ve yet to make a start on it though  :o)
• Update this blog once a week with either a new drawing, tutorial, inspiration/idea post, and/or other random fun stuff to be decided soon.
• Make a zine or three to make a new section on the site – I’m nearly finished with my first one! But I bet you all won’t be surprised to see what it is once I’ve scanned it rofl.

Umm…yeah…that’s all I’ve really thought of so far. I’m sure I’ll keep adding to the list as the year goes on. I mean it’s only the end of January after all.

On to more recent news, I came across an unfinished illustration today of a huge ice cream I did last year some time (I know big surprise right?) It was supposed to be for some random competition but I completely forgot about it and didn’t bother finishing or entering it….mainly because the competition was focussed around global warming and I thought my idea might be a bit too sarcastic to submit  SO I cleaned it up a bit today and added a few finishing touches. I have to say I’m a bit rusty at editing colours in Photoshop so that’s why the colours in this are kinda really dodgy. Oh well, I had fun making bokeh light effects anyway (Don’t know what bokeh is!?!? Find out how easy it is to make cool lighting effects in my next post  /shamelessplug).

So without further ado – here is my first drawing for 2012 – what else than giant ice cream.

Everything in this poster was meant to be a satire of “green” products…except I made it kinda cute. I CAN’T HELP IT I can’t do serious.

| 234. A Full Glass | 12:00 pm, August 22nd, 2011

A few updates:

Firstly, Ephereal now has a facebook page! I actually made it because I thought you had to make one to get the “Like” button to show up on news feeds (long story) but I figured it would also be a good way to post and share my designs. I’m not looking for massive amounts of followers – just people who are actually interested in the stuff I do and little design things I pick up along the way. Please like the page if you are. <3

Secondly, I have a new affie! Please go visit Louise’s lovely site!

Thirdly, I have an exciting announcement to make about a new website in the coming week or so so stay tuned

Fourthly, I’m looking at doing some more tutorials around Illustrator sometime soon, so if you’d like to see anything please suggest. Thanks!

| It started with an idea… | 1:42 am, September 24th, 2010

…the kind of idea that stays with you until you get it done.

The kind of idea that makes you stay up til 4am finishing the drawing.

The kind of idea that will be gone FOREVER if you don’t start it immediately.

This new layout…started with that type of idea.

I’ve always loved the concept of clouds and deserts and open spaces, and I hope this kind of complements that. I knew I wanted to draw something with clouds and I wanted a whimsical type feel to it, so I drew a lonely happy robot, floating amongst the clouds over a busy city, fishing for star flowers while watching birds and balloons pass by. Joy!

And I’m not ashamed to say this layout was fueled by tea, gummi bears, instrumental post rock and LINKIN PARK. My in the zone music needs to be as mindless/unobtrusive as possible, and for some reason….listening to either of these things in the background helped me to just do stuff.

Drawing the robot was probably the hardest part, only coz I wanted it to look 3D-ish. I started drawing it pretty late at night, and it was the type of thing that if I didn’t finish it at that specific time, I’d never finish it, and the inspiration/in the zone-ness would be gone by the next day. I woke up and pretty much started working on it again, only something felt different, and I hardly made any changes before completing the rest of the layout. Weird how that happens huh?

I wanted to make the balloons individual image links but that all became too hard and messy so I scrapped that.

I was also going to make this a horizontal layout because it just WORKED in theory because the clouds looked better horizontal than vertical, but decided it got way too messy with the divs and stuff (I hate placing div layers next to each other. It makes things so complicated!). I think the city scape at the bottom definitely helps make this layout though because this totally looked like something was missing without it.

I’m also bringing back the lens flare. Yeah. Go me. Next thing you know, I’ll be using Papyrus for an egyptian themed layout. Hah!

One thing I’m really looking forward to is APNGs, or animated PNGs. I know Firefox already supports them but other browsers don’t and its kinda annoying.  I don’t know of any programs that make aPNGs either. I wanted to make some of the stuff in the header animated, but GIFS just don’t cut it with their 256 colours!

I have some new sketches and paintings to add on here too. And photos….haha. Soon my darlings.

Anyway, hope you people like the changes.

If you liked the old layout better, don’t fret. You can switch the themes at the bottom!

| Motivation vs. Intimidation | 9:54 pm, August 10th, 2010

So I’ve uploaded most of the stuff I was going to this week- mostly new illustrations and drawings though, which I still need to update and add descriptions and stuff (something which I’m going to do right after this…or maybe tomorrow)! I’m working on adding photos but I have LOTS to go through, so it’s taking a while! I also have to upload all that ‘free stuff’ I promised – though I have to say, they’re not very exciting unless you’re talking about the Photoshop brushes/patterns I made a while ago.

I’m kind of sad though, because I’ve lost some original fireworks and ai files which contained the original illustrations due to me losing my USB, so I can’t make some images bigger than they already are!

I was also going through some old folders with some really old drawings in them, and it brought me back….waaayy back….to the Paint Shop Pro days. The days when I used to use rasters to draw instead of vectors because I didn’t know any better. It was quite cool though, and very nostalgic.

I found this old sketch which I drew when I was like, 12 or something, and because it was the first drawing I tried to make digital I thought it was funny it was still there on my hard drive. Funny story behind that too: I scanned it in the computer to try make it into a digital drawing but found out I actually couldn’t figure much stuff out after messing around a bit in Photoshop. So I signed up to some random Photoshop enthusiasts forum and posted my image and a question to see if any pro artists could give me a few tips on how to go about making it into a digital drawing and colouring it in and such.

I suppose my drawing must’ve looked extremely juvenile (it was an A4 sketch of a fantasy-type character holding a sword…I was very much into fantasy back then and still am!) because pretty much EVERYONE on the board laughed at me and told me not to bother- except for this one kind gentleman who took me through a few steps and how to use the basic tools in Photoshop and the best way to colour it in. I suppose the most important thing was, he was the first person that actually encouraged me to try doing something about me wanting to turn my drawing digital…instead of trolling me off the internet (which wasn’t hard back then because it was all dial up)! I can still remember that to this day and that has definitely taught me the importance of encouragement and motivation instead of intimidation.

I look at other people’s illustrations and artworks now and still get really intimidated about how I’ll probably never be as good as them. In fact, today I was just looking at this woman’s work, and they’re pretty amazing. I’m actually pretty jealous of anyone who can draw people, because drawing people are my worst nightmare.

I guess the only way to get better is to keep chipping away at that rock, and now that I have gotten back into all this, I am going to try get a million times better by this time next year!

I’m also using a new monitor today!! Well I got it about a week or a bit ago but I just got the cable to hook it up to my Macbook today. And it’s AMAZING. I’ve never had a monitor this big in my entire LIFE. And it’s all pretty much thanks to Cam. <3 I can draw stuff on a huge screen now!!! It is seriously the best thing ever.

I also rediscovered Fireworks!! I used to draw on Fireworks ages ago, before I realized Illustrator had a lot more features for print/web graphics, but the one thing that I really like about Fireworks is that the pen tool has a line coming from the cursor so you can angle paths better. I don’t know, I just think- why doesn’t Illustrator have that?! It’s so useful and makes things SO much easier! I know Fireworks is mostly for graphics/webpage integration but drawing on that thing is awesome. Maybe I’ll try using it again and see which program I like better.

Inspiration wise, I had another weird dream last night. It was kind of inception like because it involved a lot of elevators and going up and down into different realms, but the annoying thing is, I can hardly even remember where I end up because I forgot it all before I was about to write it down. You know that feeling when you’re just on the brink of remembering something important? That happened to me today- with that dream- but it wouldn’t come back and it was disappointing

Anyway I should probably go finish off an ad I need to do for dotdotdash and resize photos and stuff.

Goodnight internet!

| Free stuff | 4:09 pm, August 7th, 2010

I spent the last few hours deleting old subdomains and going through my old files which were on Elusionerie, and I uncovered a whole load of free stuff. As in, stuff I had made for other people AGES ago, which are now sitting in deep multi leveled folders waiting for someone to use them.

They’re pretty old and totally nostalgic, but I will probably put them up later .. just because.

I also updated some dead links and in the process of compressing stuff so I can update the art on this site.

People might remember my new year’s resolution at the start of the year, saying how I was going to draw something every week. Well, I kinda have been doing that. Only thing is, I have to admit I did get lazy for a few weeks and drew incredibly scrappy drawings which are completely embarassing.

In order to make up for those weeks of creative apathy, I have decided I am going to post something new each week, either hand drawn or digitally drawn.

My visual diary still has quite a few pages to go- It’ll be a huge accomplishment if I do finish it by the end of the year!

Here’s something I drew quickly while I was on holiday recently (hence the off centre lines and such):

People always talk about how amazing it would be if robots could do housework- well what about machines that can produce floating cake?!

I’m surprised millionaires haven’t already started backing research into this.

| Hallelujah! | 2:20 am, August 6th, 2010

YES THERE’S A NEW LAYOUT!!

About time right?! I think I’m going to miss that old scrolly layout though. Just a bit. I feel like confetti should be going off right about now though. I remember saying at the start of the year I would update this more often, but its already August and … I’m finally getting around to it. Time goes by way too fast!

I wanted this site to be a bit more user friendly so I hope it GOD it works on other browsers. It should look fine on any resolution but I haven’t actually checked on the PC yet so I don’t really know what it looks like other than what it looks like now on my 13″ screen!

Oh well. I didn’t actually spend all that much time changing it up either- which is cool since it usually takes me a while to figure out what goes where and stuff. But I’ve done heaps of little things too…getting rid of old plugins and updating stuff, and changing images a bit.

The only thing I’m worried about is the header loading a bit slowly because it’s kind of a big file but I may change that later when I have more time.

I still don’t know what to do about the background. I think I might make it a tad bigger. And if you’re wondering what I’ve drawn is all about- I wanted to depict a mix of new and old symbols; the contrast between nature and civilization…and the enduring power of the horseshoe crab. Heehee.

I was going to change the image links because green on brown doesn’t really look that great but I was stuck for ideas and … well I think I’ll leave everything for now.

I listened to the same song on repeat while updating this site, and I’m really digging the song at the moment because it’s just the most beautiful song ever, but literally- two hours+ of the same song. It was definitely the tea and Conor Oberst that helped me finish this layout without leaving it half done overnight!

Well now that I’ve accomplished my mission for the day, I might catch some zzz’s. I will update all the links and images very soon!! And add more new stuff. I have a whole load of things to add to this site, once I clear out elusionerie.com.

Hope you like the changes