Identity

A big part of my life has been constantly moving from place to place. My dad is a super ambitious guy and always wanted to move on and up to bigger and better challenges at work. The longest I've ever been at one school was at my college, for four years. The longest I've ever stayed in one city was at my first job out of college, for seven years.

I also moved to Japan with my husband two years ago for his job, and in the two years we've been here we've already lived in two different cities

When moving to different places and different countries, I've found it's really important to be adaptable & flexible. Sometimes my family would move to a new school and I'd have a really hard time making friends. Sometimes we'd move somewhere else and I'd have tons of friends. I tried to see it as a fun adventure and I never really saw it as a "bad" or "hard" thing, just something that happened from time to time.

Laura McLemore - image 1 - student project

Taste

I feel like 90% of my taste board is from stuff I loved as a kid and still adore as an adult? I really love stories about animals, fantasy, and sci-fi!

Laura McLemore - image 2 - student project

Experiences

Most of these are from some of the most memorable experiences I've had while on vacation / out exploring with family & friends. I really love the outdoors and nature and think Earth is insanely amazing with all of the variety you find in animals / plants / biomes.

Laura McLemore - image 3 - student project

Experiments

A few of my past works where I was just playing / trying new things out! Mostly with color, abstraction, and flat shapes.

Laura McLemore - image 4 - student project

Patterns

I chose a few pieces from various boards that stood out to me, and noted down different things about each of those pieces. A few reoccurring themes included transformation, nature / animals, nostalgia, and flat simple shapes.

Laura McLemore - image 5 - student project

Master Board

Once I had a better understanding of the patterns in my boards, I created this master board in order to try to summarize all of those things in a visual way!

Laura McLemore - image 6 - student project

Experiment 1

For my first experiment, I got Classic Inspo. Family History. I thought it would be cool to use inspiration from a book from my childhood, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Laura McLemore - image 7 - student project

For the Family History part, I thought it would be interesting to try to touch on moving. Whenever you move, you usually pack up your all of your belongings into your car and sometimes moving trucks. I thought it would be cool to create a car that was transformed into a house. Kind of like a camper van, only I wanted to try to merge a car and a house together.

I did this very quickly and wasn't super happy with it, but it was really fun to draw these simple shapes without worrying too much about the end result or it looking perfect.

Laura McLemore - image 8 - student project

Experiment 2

For my second experiment, I got Current Inspo. Slice of Life. For current inspo, I decided to draw inspiration from Penelope Dullaghan, an illustrator whose work is amazing.

Laura McLemore - image 9 - student project

For the Slice of Life part, I love sushi and eat it as often as I can! So I thought I'd try to draw some sushi.

Laura McLemore - image 10 - student project

Experiment 3

For my third experiment, I got "copy yourself" and "self portrait". In one of my experiments, I drew these doodles where I'd take something small and try to "evolve" it to a second and third level. A foal would become a horse, which would become a unicorn. The next step up from a cupcake would be pancakes, and the next step up from that would be a three-tiered cake.

Laura McLemore - image 11 - student project

For the self portrait part, I thought it'd be fun to do something similar, and draw myself as a baby, then as a kid, and finally as an adult!

Laura McLemore - image 12 - student project

Final Piece

For my final illustration, I decided to try to take experiment one and iterate on it a bit! Since I wasn't happy with how it turned out I thought I could maybe do a better job, and this is what I came up with!

I'm really happy with how it turned out and loved working on this piece.

Laura McLemore - image 13 - student project

Da Rules

I tried to look at what worked & what didn't work so well in my experiments, and created this set of rules for my style!

Laura McLemore - image 14 - student project

Sticker Sheet

I did these after defining my rules! They're not perfectly consistent and there are still more things I'd need to iron out. But I had a blast working on these :)

Laura McLemore - image 15 - student project

Style Guide

This is the style guide I came up with! I am really happy with how everything turned out and this is an amazing exercise to do. Style is always something I've struggled with and having this knowledge / thought process is incredibly helpful!

Laura McLemore - image 16 - student project

Laura McLemore

Drawing is delightful :)

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