The Final Design
I have mentioned in my previous post that I was really inspired by Illuminated Manuscripts because of how incredibly detailed they were, and they instantly had that fairy tale feel to it and I found that they were very "rich" in the sense that only expensive designs would have that much detail in. Actually, thinking about it, I think only the rich were able to purchase such beautiful books!
I wasn't too sure on what I was going to do in terms of colour so I thought that I would do all of the drawing and inking first before going onto that. I wanted to just let myself go with the flow and not decide too much before I even start!
I start by drawing out the outline of the invitation (as I drew this on A4) with the dimensions of an A5 piece, and then drew another boundary of where the castle would be so that I could draw it as accurately as possible. And then I started to draw the castle!
Once that was done I drew rough outlines of all of the roses so that I could see a basic structure in their positioning. I then began to place some fairy tale aspects from my favourite fairy tales; Rapunzel, Rumpelskiltskin, Brier Rose, Snow White, Cinderella and the Prince and the Frog. I want to make these aspects a sort of a treasure hunt for the viewer to figure out the fairy tales.
Then it was onto the inking! I went quite slowly on this as I didn't want any of the ink to smudge. I did it layer by layer as it were, starting off with the castle, then the fairy tales, and then the roses.
I wanted to add depth to the illustration and so I thickened some of the lines of the roses but mostly the lines of the castle so that it stood out from the other elements.
And now it's time for the REAL INK! I've never used ink before but I had purchased Higgins Black Magic a couple of months ago and I was dying to try it out. It had a really strong smell to it so I felt really dizzy but after a while I just got used to it. I didn't have any pens for this so I just used a paint brush.
Like with the line drawing, I did this by section and went very slowly. Luckily the ink dried relatively quickly.
And then it was done!
Now that that's done I scanned it in and brought it up on Photoshop because when I scanned it in it didn't come out completely black and white. Therefore the first thing I did was go onto Image > Adjustments > Black and White and played around with the values.
Secondly, I went on and played around with the Levels to make the black darker and the white lighter instead of having that grey tone to it. To increase this contrast even more I went onto Brightness and Contrast and played around with their values as well.
Next I crop the image because I wanted to cut off the stray roses poking over the edge using the Crop tool. Once that was done, it was then ready to be uploaded onto InDesign.
I fitted it so that it would sit within the margin outlined and once that was done I copied & pasted it onto the other side. I then drew a white box and started to put in the type.
I went along with using Junicode for the main body and Lavandria for the headings/bigger type, and you can find my reasons here.
When that was done I zoomed out to take a look at it, and I decided to try it out with a cream background to mimic old pages from a book. So I drew a box around both pages, set it at a lower opacity, and then put the type so that it was brought to the front.
So I end up with something like this:
Conclusion:
When I do print it out I'll delete the cream layer because I plan on printing it out onto cream paper. I really really like this design and for the first time during this project I am completely satisfied. I think what I'll do now is test it out with different colours but so far I love the monochrome colours and it also fits into a current trend (as shown on Wedding Ideas Magazine).
Update 23.04.2013
After showing my design to my lecturers and classmates they gave me some feedback, and that was to fill in the windows with black, add some brick shapes, and to possibly add some colour to some of the roses to bring it out a little bit.
The first step I took was to draw little bricks and to fill in the windows.
Once that was done I then brought it up onto Photoshop to adjust the brightness, contrast, levels and then cropped it.
Now that I have my image I want to see how it'll look on the invite before I add some colour to it, so I created a new page to the same document as my other invitations but used the newer illustration.
I get this so far:
Okay now it's time to do some experimentation with colour, so I go back onto photoshop and created a new layer named "colour". I've decided to use a light pink to mimic the colour of brier roses.
Taking a soft brush I dotted colour on some of the roses, and changed the layer style to Multiply. Once I was satisfied with the amount of coloured roses I erased the parts where the colour went onto the vines and castle.
I then lowered the opacity so that it would softly blend in with the rest of the image.
Now it's time to bring it back onto InDesign to place it with the invite and then I'll be able to compare the two designs: one with colour, one without.
Conclusion:
I'm finding it really difficult when comparing the two, although I think that the pink does bring up the design a bit and make it seem more "alive". It was subtly done so it's not too in-your-face but produces a very calm blend. It could also bring up connotations of romance because of the link between the colour pink and of innocent love, and pink is the colour of brier rose.
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