Saal Digital Photo Book Review

      I recently had the chance to create my own Photo Book from Saal Digital in exchange for an honest review. I was really excited for this chance, as a photographer I have a huge backlog of photos which may end up on Flickr or Facebook but never usually make it into print! I did recently get some 6x4" prints from Snapfish on an offer but the quality was just not comparable to what I see on screen! 

      I used this as an excuse to make a kind of portfolio for the images I have taken over the past year. I have been taking some online Photography courses which you can read about in previous posts, this has really improved the quality of my recent work and I wanted to see that in print. I decided to go for a wraparound cover in matte padded finish. This image taken of a lake near the hoover dam is one of my favourites with all the colours and clouds and I think it worked well.

       You don't have to have the padded cover, it is an extra, but it gives the book a nice, luxury feel. 

       For the inside I chose matte lustre finish on the paper as I tend to prefer this over gloss. The book also has flat binding so it lies perfectly flat as you turn the pages, this is another nice touch which allows your prints to not get lost in the gutter in the centre.

       The possibilities for layouts are endless in these books! They have all sorts of collage templates with the option to have many photos per page. I kept it simple with each double spread having 2-4 photos, the flat binding meant I could have photos across the centre still perfectly viewable as shown below. 

      The colour representation is really beautiful. I have a retina screen on my mac which can show every flaw in an image, but also gives great definition for sharpness versus my old screen, these prints definitely do the images justice!

       A couple of things to be careful of:

Check image size - The book creator does tell you if your images are big enough, the cover image was "good" rather than "great" in their terms which meant it wasn't pixellated but also wasn't quite as crisp as the others due to it being stretched to cover the front and back! 

Check print proofs - The below images of jewellery are both meant to be on black slate, the right image is somehow a really pale grey which wasn't how the file looked when I saved it! No idea still how that happened but make sure you double check everything before sending to print.

       Overall I would absolutely recommend Saal Digital for Photo Books, I may even try them for art prints too as they have a lot of other services on their website! I have bought photo books before as gifts, and while the printing is generally ok, they don't get even close to this one! The above book in A4 is around £44 with postage for I think a 29 page book. These are great for portfolios, wedding photos, really nice family albums and would make a very special gift for someone. 

The Girl and the Bird

My course leader Ashley Potter from Plymouth University has been running a project to investigate how different people tackle illustration work and how this may relate to their personalities. 

The project was entitled "Girl & Bird" this subject has been tackled many times in the past in all different ways and we were asked to interpret it however we liked, and then answer a questionnaire about our work which involved questions about ourselves, the work we did and about our personality types. 

I used this project as an opportunity to do a "real" illustration project, after months away from university I have found myself spending much less time on research and drawing development in the work I do and I wanted to push myself further in this one to try and create something exciting.

I used Pinterest to collect a variety of images to inspire me. Since I started learning aerial hoop I have been collecting different poses to motivate myself and I found myself drawn to the idea of including this in my work for this project as the grace and elegance of aerial artists posing in hoops reminds me of birds sat on branches. 

The first aerial girls I drew were ok, I found myself reverting back to the style I used when drawing the circus characters for my final year project. Whilst the facial expressions for that worked well, I wanted this girl to look less juvenile and more sophisticated.

After researching pierrot makeup and fashion illustrations I spent a while experimenting with different face styles in the drawings shown below. 

I much preferred these to the simplistic expressions I used to use and decided to carry this as a theme within the bird character. My first birds were fun, but rather fat :

I developed these using longer, curvier lines and more sophisticated faces, I wanted them to look more like birds of paradise.

For my final piece I chose a hanging pose for the girl on the hoop as I really liked the pose, I decided to use textured watercolour paper as it gave the line work a rougher style.

After scanning the drawing in I coloured it using Photoshop, I chose a palette of bright, fun colours to fit the fantastical theme, I was very happy with it and I hope to put prints online soon!

Tigerprint christmas type competition

I was excited when reading the brief for this months Tigerprint competition because I have been needing an excuse to work on my hand drawn type and this seemed like the perfect project! I spent a lot of time working on different phrases in different styles and played around with different drawing implements. The photos below show some of my sketchbook work using brush pen, graphite pencil, italic markers and rotring fineliners to create different lines and textures. 

I played around with 5 different phrases for final designs, two I just couldn't get to look right so I scrapped them, these 3 are the ones I will be submitting for the competition:

This was my first design, I like the type, still not entirely sure the colour palette is quite right - I think I work better with a smaller selection of colours!

I loved drawing the frame for this image, I wanted it to be quite decorative with simple colours.

This one is my favourite - I love burgundy and I think the type fitted the shape really well.

Shapes and flowers collection

Yay new work! 

I have been working a lot recently (at my "normal" job) but I get two half hour breaks so have been doing doodles in the staff room when I have the energy! 

I used this colour palette from my previous blog post because I like the range of different colours and wanted to branch out from always using shades of purple and blue (yes there is still purple but I pretty much never use red, yellow, or brown. shh...)

These four are based around different shapes, the two below are focused on natural forms and using the brighter colours to make the linework pop. 

I would love to know your thoughts on these and if there are any products you would like to see them on? I am thinking of making some coasters and mugs when I get the right materials in :)