Jane Austen

I am just too excited about Matchbook, as you know. I adore learning who the famous lady of choice shall be each month and planning out their imaginary bag contents with the help and knowledge of the Matchbook team of course.

So for the second issue's drawing which showcases the somewhat myserious yet very loved Jane Austen I decided to capture my creative process to share.

Of course my starting point is getting the Name (then getting super excited) and a little list of items to include in my drawing. I go straight to google to research these items and find perfect things to draw. I save all my findings in a wonderful little folder on my desktop. Of course I dream up things myself, just copying from photos is no fun at all.

Here are a handful of the things I found for inspiration for my Jane Austen drawing...

I make a first sketch. (Usually I just go to the final drawing but sometimes when there are a lot of little details I need to do some planning. Got to be sensible sometimes.)

oh a little peek at my super comfy fluffy sheepskin ballerina slippers!

The final drawing starts with lots and lots of pencil, finding all the perfect lines to fill in with thin black ink afterwards. I adore making little stich marks. (you may have noticed, my drawings are full of them!) I take my time around an hour or two, but even so, some lines are a bit wonky and wiggly. (Gives charm I say!) While drawing I usually enjoy catching up with some of my favorite shows. I watch them online or from my harddrive as we have no actual tv. (Yeah we are those 'tv is evil' kinds, hehe. We eat long dinners, read books, listen to music, and enjoy eachothers company instead.)

I love getting pencil smuges on the backs of my hands.

I think my favorite part is erasing away all the pencil scratches to reveal my perfect gorgeous ink drawing. There are usually a few mistakes but I easily erase and fix them in photoshop before I start coloring.... or leave them if it's charming.

The coloring process is also fun. I adore how photoshop allows me to test out a few colors and I can change them around with out committing unlike if I was actually painting. (I think this is the main reason I switched from painting to digital coloring, because I'm a big wimp, and a bit of a profectionist. I just hate getting things wrong and especially hate doing things over.)

And then all of a sudden after about a million clicks the illustration is done. Isn't she pretty? Now I get to share her. Post her on my blog, on Etsy, on Flickr and then cross my fingers that everyone likes her. Well of course I have to wait first. The Matchbook ladies get to secretly hold it until the release date... it's all very exciting keeping secrets.

Hope that was interesting!