Ape on the Moon: Contemporary Illustration » Paper Illustration

Win an A3 print and Toy from The Tree House Press

moonape — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:52:13 +0000

*Winners Announced!*

A huge congratulations to Katie Hanratty from Manchester, UK who has won the large print, toys and spoke cards!

Well done to runners up Craig Podd from Shropshire, UK and Laura Alvarez from Spain who won the toys and cards.

You will all be contacted soon.

Thank you to everyone who got involved!

–

Ok, it’s competition time at Ape on the Moon!

UK illustration studio ‘The Tree House Press‘ has some excellent limited toys and prints to give away.

The studio, run by illustrator Marc Aspinall, and who has worked with Computer Arts, Thunder Chunky and Digital Arts magazine, has produced a dashing 3-colour hand printed 210 gsm A3 print called ‘EastXWest‘, an A5 paper toy cat called ‘Nyan Nyan‘, and some fun bicycle spoke cards (available in the TTHP store).

The winner receives the A3 print, toy and cards, carefully packaged with sticker. Two runners up receive the limited toy and spoke cards.

The competition ends on Friday 14th May 2010. Winners will be announced here.

To be in for a chance of winning, simply write a comment below this post saying why you’d like the prize, or ‘tweet’ the following line on Twitter:

Win an A3 hand print and paper toys from The Tree House Press and @moonape http://su.pr/1fnKgt RT to enter giveaway!

Good Luck and may the force be strong with you!

Bigfoot Poster Tutorial

moonape — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:07:04 +0000

You might remember Oregon-based Peruvian designer and illustrator, Santiago Uceda’s poster art as featured in a previous Ape on the Moon post here. What he’s great at is the hand-drawn, rough style of his artwork.

Santiago is back to share his step by step work process behind one of his recent posters, featuring the Portland hipster Bigfoot. Enjoy!

Materials: Pencil; Sumi ink and brush; Block printing ink; Roller; Plexiglass; X-acto knife.

1. Ideas

The challenge was to create a poster for a Society6 Portland poster series based on fun facts centering around Portland in Oregon.

One thing that is often associated with the Northwest is the mythical creature Bigfoot. Bigfoot is not necessarily associated with Portland, but I figured this is a place he would call home if he were given the chance.

2. Sketch

I always start with a light pencil or blue pencil sketch and then ink that. I don’t do to many preliminary sketches. There’s usually a very rough sketch just to get the idea and placement across and after that is final.

I sketch & ink the different elements separately and then assemble and color them in Photoshop.

I wasn’t quite happy with the first Bigfoot, so I drew another one on a separate piece of paper and then collaged them together.

3. Color and Texture

I create my textures with mono-prints or with ink. For the river texture I made some wavy textures with mono-prints. I rolled some ink onto the Plexiglas and made some wavy strokes with a brush.

I then transferred the ink to a piece of sketchbook paper.

Colors don’t really matter at this point, I usually change colors in Photoshop.

For the clouds I cut out some cloud shapes, rolled ink on the Plexi, put clouds face down on ink, place another piece of paper on top of cloud, cut out and then scribble on top of that sheet. The scribbles are transferred onto the cloud cut outs.

The bridge and hand lettering were done with Sumi ink and brush..

Once it’s all been scanned and composed in Photoshop, I start playing with color by applying color to individual layers with layer effects.

The multi-colored rain was a bit much so I toned it down and ended up with a more subdued palette.

And there you have it!

Excellent, thank you Santiago!

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Paper Cut Illustrations by Graça Brohm

moonape — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:10:02 +0000

Here are some very artfully done papercut illustrations by Graça Brohm from Holland that I saw on her innovative portfolio site.

What is clever, apart from the excellent style in the illustrations themselves, is the use of negative space and shadow to add extra depth to each piece.

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What do people think of these?

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Paper Cut Illustrations of Hiyoko Imai

moonape — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:09:39 +0000

I love the simple and refreshing work of Tokyo born, but living in Amsterdam artist Hiyoko Imai. Her illustration series, that uses pieces of cut traditional Japanese papers on card to compose images, are extremely satisfying.

Thank you Hiyoko

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