This is a project I was thinking about doing anyway, and this class is giving me the push and great tips for getting it done. I'm basically creating a 2016 calendar of yoga-related sayings (I'm a yoga nut).

It's obviously something I'm going to print and use, so I researched printing ideas and decided to go with a size that would fit in one of the calendar stands that looks like a CD case. You can order the cases/stands here: http://www.calendar-case.com/cd-calendar-cases.php

Here is some initial inspiration. I love vintage-style lettering but also want to incorporate visuals that are yoga-related like lotus petals and mandala elements, so that may be a challenging combination!

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 1 - student project

Here's my inital brainstorm, as far as what the months are going to say and some very basic design-y sketches (It's very messy, I know):

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 2 - student project

I'd like for the letter style, borders, design elements and eventually, colors, to make everything look cohesive, so I started by getting an idea for what the different letter styles and borders might look like. I know this may evolve as I go, and I'm not going to be crazy rigid about it.

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 3 - student project

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 4 - student project

(sorry these are a touch blurry)

I am creating thumbnails to get ideas for each month design, but I know that if I upload all of them (for ALL 12 months), this is going to be a super long project, so I'll just upload a handful of them as I go. Here are some very messy thumbnails for January: Set your Intention.

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 5 - student project

Here is the resulting sketch:

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 6 - student project

And here is the sketch for June: Just Breathe (I'm so not going in order here!)

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 7 - student project

And a few more months:

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 8 - student project

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 9 - student project

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 10 - student project

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 11 - student project

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 12 - student project

I know that I still have some sketching to do, but I started doing some digitizing and coloring on the sketches I already have. I don't want it to seem like I'm jumping the gun, but because this is turning into a big, time-consuming project (I'm still not awesome at the lettering thing, so I spend a lot of time making mistakes! :-P), I needed to change things up and give myself some visual momentum so I could start to see what these will look like when finished.

I played with a few color sets, but ended up creating this one and rolling with it:

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 13 - student project

After inking and scanning, I clean things up a bit in Photoshop and then move to Illustrator. Here is a vectorized version of "Just Breathe" and then some color examples.

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 14 - student project

A few more colorized months: (as a side note, I'm obviously going to add the calendar part and any texture at the very end.)

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 15 - student project

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 16 - student project

All of the initial digitizing is done! Now, I need to get in there and tweak any elements that bug me, add the calendar parts and decide whether I want to use texture. I should probably also create a cover :-)

12 Months of Yoga Goodness - image 17 - student project

Karen Willmore

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