The heck is a "zine"?

How do I even pronounce it?

Why should I care about this?

These are a few of the questions that crossed my mind when I stumbled upon this class, but despite the entirely foreign concept, I decided to watch it. It ended up being very enjoyable, and even though zines are a quite odd idea to me, having never heard of them just a few hours ago, I really enjoyed making my first ever zine.

I'm a writer and an artist, but I wanted to do an illustrative zine as that sounded more fun and spontaneous. As soon as I felt I had a grasp on what a zine is, I knew immediately that I wanted to do something related to autumn. It's not my favorite season, but it easily has my favorite color scheme (plus, it's autumn right now). I made a list of a dozen odd things I love about autumn, picked out six, and went to town.

My Favorite Things About Autumn (First Zine Project) - image 1 - student project

I wanted to combine this with a recent illustrative obsession of mine, which is zentangles. Basically, it's a bunch of relaxing patterns that twist and wind around each other. It looks all complicated even though it's not.

The first thing to draw was long sleeves. It felt right since I was wearing overly-long sleeves while drawing this. After sketching a couple ideas on a separate piece of paper, I decided to weave the zentangle around it and leave the shirt white. I did the opposite with the next page, mushrooms. I don't like the taste of mushrooms but I think they're adorable and definitely a blast to doodle. I used a dark brown marker, but it came out looking black in the photo. My Favorite Things About Autumn (First Zine Project) - image 2 - student project

After that was fuzzy socks. I really like the composition for this doodle. This was the only time I sketched directly on the paper because I wanted the socks to match as best I could. Everything else in this zine was freehand. The autumn leaves were straightforward and I added a bit of speckling to make the page a bit more interesting to look at.

My Favorite Things About Autumn (First Zine Project) - image 3 - student project After that was rain. I made some simple rainclouds with raindrops attached by strings. I saw this done online and mimicked it to a degree. The pumpkin page may very well be my favorite and easily took the longest. I made a couple mistakes on this spread (the upper right cloud has a super dark line I didn't intend and I accidentally colored the pumpkin's stem blue) but I tried not to make it draw attention away from the rest of the art.

My Favorite Things About Autumn (First Zine Project) - image 4 - student project

Possible drawing ideas I didn't include were: big blankets, thunderstorms, windstorms, Halloween, the colors, and the cold air.

So, that's my very first zine! I admit, I forgot to give myself a time limit and ended up working on it for maybe two hours, possibly more. However, I don't regret it and I think I learned a lot about being spontaneous and confident with my lines and different ways to incorporate zentangle into my drawings. I don't know if I'll make a zine again, but I'll definitely keep it in mind for a rainy day.

As for feedback, I'd simply love to know if the drawings make it clear what I'm trying to say, whether they're confusing, or ways you think I could have improved composition or subject matter. Thanks for checking out my project!

Kit K.

Just here to learn me some stuffs.

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