I've Moved!

Hi Guys! I haven't posted here for a while.. I got pretty busy and my drawing for fun time was very sparse. I have decided to never let myself not draw for fun again! >:D

Since I want to start fresh, I have created a new blog on tumblr. It is http://tanyadraws.tumblr.com/
I have set a drawing challenge for myself where I will post a new drawing every day! I hope to keep this up for 365 days.

I also created a new website featuring some of my best illustrations and graphic design I have done for clients. That website can be found at http://www.tanyalegere.com/

I won't be updating this anymore, but I will keep it up because it is a nice time capsule of one chapter of my life. :)

Thanks for everything!

-Tanya

Messy

Its been a while since I posted something here! It is now august 1st, I can't believe summer is almost gone. I have been working lots lately, but I have been doing lots of reading and relaxing as well. This week in particular I am off work until next wednesday.. it should be great! I spend lots of time outdoors, we have this really pretty gazebo in our backyard, its a great place to read and draw and just have quiet time to myself.

This is my gazebo, fave spot ever!

Ive not been in the mood to draw very much lately, so I have been doodling lately instead. But I really miss producing real finished pieces. Maybe I will have one soon, who knows! For now, here is a photoshop doodle I made today. I just wanted to do a drawing with some certain colours, and I got this one.

[WIP] Gown

Well, I am done uploading all of my old work, so its time to add a recent piece.
I went on another drawing spree the other day, and this is what i came up with. I just had an image like this in mind so i decided to draw it. I also hadn't used my markers in a while, so that was nice to use again. I find I like markers and pen way better than pencil.

I plan on trying out some new things with this one, we will see how it looks.

A Kind of Mutiny

This is the second book cover I did for graphic design class. It was based upon a really depressing short story about a man who loses his thumb in a saw accident in his workshop. His dog takes his thumb, and will not give it back. His wife eventually gathers the thumb from the dog, and the husband is taken to the hospital, but it is too late to re-attach his thumb. The man takes the loss of his thumb hard, and begins to neglect his workshop and abuse drugs. He hates his dog for being disloyal to him, and hates his wifes perfect hands. I captured the story in the book cover by using an extremely uncomfortable cropped composition. I filled the title with a subtle background of pills, and used dull colours for the background.

Never Ask Questions

This was for a 2nd year project, where we had to listen to a band that we randomly picked from a hat, rename it with names that we randomly picked from a hat, and had to give it an album title with a word you got randomly too. I got this gangster rap sort of genre, I was going for sort of graffiti on a wall, because when I think gangster rap I correlate it with graffiti, the big, chunky sort of wall graffiti. We had to create a cd cover for this band, as well as a poster to go inside it.

Nancy's Bakery

These are some mock logos I created for a bakery called Nancy's bakery.

Life=Art

So a while ago I created some logos and layouts for a company called Life=Art Photography. It was fun working on these, and closely with the business owner to come up with something she likes. Here are the Logos i created, as well as a Thank You card for her to send out. Each circle represents the different types of photography she does: children, wedding, and fashion photography.

Avenue: Winter Wonderland

For 2nd year Infographics class, we had to come up with a spread that would appear in a newspaper. It was winter, and although it was not snowing I decided that it would be fun to rediscover the different types of snow forts you could make, if it was snowing.

Water Packaging

This was a project done in 3rd year graphic design. We had to come up with the designs for flavoured water. The product names I worked with were Fire water and Rain water. The audience we were given to work with was an older, richer audience. I created the packaging with wine in mind.

Designer Fabric outlet

4th year graphic design project. We were given a company and had to redesign the logotype, business cards, and postcards.

Constellations Book

I have decided to upload some of my old projects upon realizing that they were never shared! I don't know why I didn't share them, this was above all my favourite project of the year. It was done in my 4th year at Sheridan College. For my final project I created an illustrated book about some stories behind the constellations that I really liked. I had nine illustrations total, and the book printed out very nicely. I used blurb.com if you are interested in creating your own. Anyways, these are my favourite pages.

Interior Design Poster

Sooo I am pretty happy today because I found an old piece that I thought I lost! The quality is bad because I no longer have the digital file and I had to take a picture of it (its too big to scan). I will reupload when I remake this one!

Pattern exploration

After coming home from an intense new experience with hot yoga, and being sunburned and not wanting to go outside I had a random creative burst!  :)
While using printed fabrics for my illustrations is fun and all, sometimes I just have a particular design in my mind, and found fabrics just won't cut it. I have toyed with the idea of making my own printed patterns, and today I actually got down to doing it. And it was surprisingly fun.

I forget how flexible adobe illustrator can be, and how much fun I had fooling around in graphic design class. Seeing as most of my finished work is in digital format, it makes sense to have my own collection of digital patterns. One of my main concerns was how to make the pattern symmetrical and repeatable. That was surprisingly way too easily accomplished in illustrator. This is what i did!

I started out with 1 line and created this object. 

 I repeated the object, rotated it, overlapped it, and changed the stroke to create different looks!

Its repeatable! Woot!

After repeating and getting rid of a few green background squares, it looks like this. 

So it was a very simple process, very simple design, and  I hope to try more unique and intricate patterns in the future. This was all done in under 20 minutes, and the exploration on just that one object is endless! 

Problem solved! And its so much fun making these! Seriously, why hadn't I tried this sooner?!
-kicks self in butt for being lazy-

Bun [WIP]

Ive been going through lots of magazines that I had gotten from the library as discards and choosing my favourite pages. Ive been creating a binder full of poses, colours, pretty clothes and awesome hair... and needless to say, I have been drawing lots too! Most of the pictures are in my sketchbook and not yet scanned, but here is one that I started on the computer.
I decided to draw an asian girl this time, and I love profiles. So I'm really looking forward to this one completed! I had originally told myself that the next drawing I do will be using a burnt orange colour and an aquamarine, but I prefer the deep reds and light greyish blues for this one.

(This is how I had been wearing my hair for the past month, minus the bangs, but not anymore! Snazzy new haircut ;D This is a tribute to my bun.. which I will miss!)

This post also proves that I am not dead, and indeed being somewhat productive. XD 

In other news, I have recently become addicted to Pinterest and have been browsing it for hours and pinning different things instead of being productive. I now have tons of pretty images in my head-- and on my pinboards! I plan on collecting more images first hand in toronto for this long weekend! Ill bring my trusty digital camera (which I hope to soon be replacing with that d7000) and I hope to take some pretty sunset shots from the CN tower. Which I have never been on before, despite me living here my whole life. 

Hope everyone has a lovely long weekend! 

Tanya

Blogger frustration

Sooo I had created this lovely list of blogs that I really liked to watch, and now I cant seem to find them anywhere. Where did they go? :( I have looked and refreshed my reading list over and over again, still no luck or any record that I have actually been following these blogs. I am not sure if this is a glitch or if I have to go back through and re-follow all the blogs I was following before? Either way... this is frustrating! Maybe I just dont know how to navigate around the new layout, I dont know.
If anyone has any solutions on how to get my list back, let me know! I miss it :P

Chrysanthemum

Here is the completed picture that I posted about! I used some new patterns this time, and after lots of experimentation with colours I like this one best. Here is what it looked like:

And this is what it looks like completed!

I really enjoyed working with this one, I had so many great colour options so it was fun to experiment with all of them! I had found a bunch of new patterns too, so I had to try every one out.... xD Project save for camera is starting this month, and I have all these awesome discontinued patterns turned pillows at home, so hopefully soon I will have an awesome camera to take photos of them! (ok ok, i know i don't need a great camera to shoot them, its just an excuse that is making me feel better about it)

Now I am going to go read my new book and enjoy the fact that I am NOT outside in this yucky weather. Have a great week!

Chrysanthemum [WIP]

While browsing through some illustrations earlier on today, I was reminded of the direction that I had originally wanted to go in through school, but didn't because I felt pushed in a different direction. The way I have been drawing up until now requires very minimal to no reference at all-- which is nice sometimes, but what I really want to do is use reference! I love just looking at something and drawing it rather than pulling it out of my mind... it is one of the things I have missed in my life for a while now. I feel like through school I relied to heavily on reference so I just stopped all together. I think I need to get over that and accept the fact that maybe reference is good for things I am not particularly strong at! So I am going to try this way-- a more realistic rather than cartoony line drawing. I have been looking at cameras recently (DSLR to be specific!) and I am really excited about how I can pair photography with my illustration! The thought of taking my own reference pictures is really exciting!! What isn't exciting is the price of these things, but I will worry about that when it comes time to purchase one. :P

As for this picture in specific, I kept seeing photos of really pretty Chrysanthemum flowers, and thought it would be lovely to incorporate into an illustration. I plan on doing more to it later, but I thought I would just add this now to prove that I am indeed still here! :P

This is the picture that I first saw while browsing, so I hope it is indeed a Chrysanthemum flower, either way it is a beautiful photo and a beautiful flower~ 

http://ceriaz.deviantart.com/art/Why-is-a-flower-44610659

^That photo belongs to that page :)

Hope to add the completed work soon!

IF- Shades

I was not satisfied with my first edit/linework that I did a few weeks back of this girl. I felt that when I created the lines over the pencil in photoshop, I lost lots of the details that I had. So I decided to work on it from a different technique and kept the original pencil. And added a cool pair of shades, of course. :P I am much more happy with it now, and I will stop working on this picture and move on. 

Original: 

Verge

A random personal logo project. I just picked a random name and went with it. I wanted something eye catching, bold but still matching the marketing field. I experimented with various shapes/fonts/colours, but these were my favourite.

Things I lost

So in my 4th year of school, very very last day of the 1st semester, I lost my usb key... which had a large portion of my graphic design from that semester on it! I unfortunately didn't back up most of it... but luckily, I still have some printouts! Rather than scanning them in, I am just going to recreate them, as I wasn't completely happy with them before. 

This is from a project where we had to create a book cover based on a short story.

"Angie left Virgil -- left the baby too. For the past five months Virgil's been planning for today's homecoming.

Angie says in her fidgety bird voice, "Lo, Virg. Ain't too gooda day is it? Waddyathink, Virg, waddyathink?

"Not so good. She's in the other room."

A tear in the window shade angles light into a cardboard box where the baby lies, dreamless. She is in her best clothes, as if dressed for a tea party. Virgil strokes her soft-hair and pale cheek. He ties the lid closed with white string.

Then his mind explodes into a pile of loose hay."