Illustrate a "Tools of the Trade" Postcard

Whether we are designers, illustrators, or cake bakers, we all find ourselves needing to promote ourselves or describing to others what we do for a living. An illustrated postcard can help tell this story in a visually compelling way, which can go along way in promoting your business.

In this assignment, we will be illustrating your favourite, go-to tools — whatever things you most enjoy using or having to do what you do! After scanning in your sketches, you will create your “base” illustrations in Photoshop, and then embellish them by creating and sampling lines, brush marks, squiggles, handwriting, and any other textures you wish. By the end of this project, you will have a beautiful, print- and digital-ready postcard that you can use to promote your business. This assignment will include the following key stages

Choosing Five Objects
Sketching Your Postcard
Choosing Colours
Starting the Base Illustration
Making Physical Marks and Textures
Bringing the Physical Marks into Photoshop
Completing the Illustration

Deliverables
The outcomes of this project are geared around sharing your work when it's most helpful to receive feedback from the class.

Share Your Sketches
Share Your Work in Progress (Key Object)
Upload Your Final Finished Postcard

This project is a great way to geek out about your favourite gear, develop a more personal illustration style, and learn some great tricks and techniques along the way. Enjoy the process and be sure to upload your projects so everyone (myself inlcuded) can appreciate them!

Inspiration
I've set up a Pinterest board with visuals to inspire you. They include examples of combining ink and shapes, bold colour palettes, and different compositions of smaller illustrations within a composition. If you have some inspiration you'd like to share, please do!

Pinterest Page Link: https://www.pinterest.com/tommyfroese/inky-illustrations-inspiration-board

Photoshop Help
If you want to learn more about the Pen tool in Photoshop, I recommend taking Meg Lewis's Skillshare class, Fundamentals of Photoshop: Typography and the Pen Tool.

Sketch Template
I've attached to this project page a PDF of the sketch template that I made in Lesson 2. You can make your own, or just download and print this one.

Beyond This Project
I've included a digital image of my own postcard, and also a photo of what it looked like when I printed it on letterpress. If after the project you would like to know how to prepare your artwork for letterpress printing, please let me know. If there are enough interested, I will create a class on this topic!

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Jeffrey Youngblood

designer and illustrator

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