A few posts ago I mentioned that I am in the midst of taking an online class called Make Art That Sells (or MATS) by Lilla Rogers. I already showed you images of my assignments for week 1 and 2. As I head into week 5, I thought I’d share weeks 3 and 4!

Week #3’s focus was on the Children’s book market. Wouldn’t I love to illustrate a kids book! I had different intentions this week, one of them being to illustrate in felt, the way that I’ve done in the past for my Kleenex boxes. But the assignment didn’t lead me in that direction! We were asked to illustrate the cover of the story “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”. With the requirements given (and only one short week of time allotted) I just didn’t think I could pull it off with felt and embroidery!

 

So I opted for water color pencils and computer work.  I didn’t know goats could be so cute! I tried to give them each a different personality. We were also required to do some hand letting rather than just use fonts from our computers.

 

I’m happy with the final piece I submitted, but I know I could do better. It looks more like a color comp (like a draft) to me than a final piece of artwork. But I did learn a TON of photoshop tricks that I didn’t know before. Again, not something taught directly in this class, but stuff I had to teach myself to get the job done.

The next assignment, for Week #4 was abstract Wall Art. Totally out of my comfort zone! We were asked to collage and paint (eep!) in an assigned color palette. Mine was Blue and Purple. Not what I would’ve chosen but good to stretch ourselves, right?

 

I started with fabrics…old jeans, scraps of vintage sheets, neck ties, a doily (that I painted!) etc. We were also supposed to incorporate a word or quote! I chose “dream” because I had a little quilted bit with the word leftover from my Dream Quilt project in Present Perfect (Quilted by Melissa Averinos!) After stitching all of the blue stuff down for a background, I photographed it and brought it into Photoshop.

That’s where I added other things that I scanned, like knit and crocheted motifs, some doodle flowers and another “dream” that I painted. That’s where the purple of the palette came in!

 

Here’s my final submission. It’s ok. I wouldn’t hang it on my wall, but it was fun to do and I learned a lot. And I gained huge amount of technical confidence. It’s made me think about how I would approach other projects now that I have a new understanding of my tools.

And today I am knee deep in Week#5, The Gift Market! I’m excited yet not fully inspired for this weeks project, so I’ve got some work to do on that.