Initial

Well, I started off with idea development inspired by '30 things about me'. Then I decided to have a go with me holding a Z and F balloons as it reminds me when I went to an art festival at my friends' uni. That was good and I am planning to go to that festival again this summer (In Malaysia)

Me and my friend holding a balloon each but then when it comes to sketches , i found it difficult to illustrate face especially with weird angel face so I decided to give up and try another idea. I went back to my ideas and tried to illustrate the hi-tops idea. The concept behind this hi-tops idea is I wear hi-tops all the time and it makes me realised that I have a close relationship and a high interest in hi-tops.

Using my hi-top as a reference. I did few sketches on my sketchbook.

Because I am not good at drawing identical right and left hi-top, I decided to scan my sketch and flip the drawing on photoshop so they are identical. 2 different hi-tops represent the amount of hi-tops that I've got.

My 'tone of voice' inspirations was these:-

I want to add some handmade texture to my illustrations and use paint at the same time. 

I found some linos under my bed so I thought of experimenting with it as I don't want to use Illustrator anymore. Using a pencil I sketch on top a lino. This is my first time experimenting with this media, so it is very new to me.

cut cut cut cut cut.

the cutter's holder and the lino cutter. I used a acrylic paint, brush, a roller and other unconventional tools to print my lino prints. 

This was my lino look like when it got print on it.

Some lino prints. From these I pick the one that have a high contrast between the background and the line illustration.

 I picked this one. I scanned in a very high resolution as the final piece needs to be in A2.

In Photoshop, I opened and changed the illustration to 'Grayscale'.

I also changed the Brightness/Contrast. To make the the outlines look bolder, I used the erase tool. I thought it look too busy especially when I found it difficult to see the differences between the background and the foreground illustration.

So what i did was I erased the background and tadaaaa. I love how simple it is. Hmm, I dont know if I should edit the edges so the edges will look more clean and neat.

I made the trousers darker so the audience can tell the differences between the hi-tops and the trousers. I also cleaned the edges by used the pen tool.