Designing Notebook + Sketchbook Covers · Commission Time E.3 - Making Money Is EasyMaking Money Is Easy

Hey guys, before the video starts I just wanted to take a second to share a few more links to go with the ones I shared a few days ago on Instagram. You will find a huge list of petitions and places you can donate, also really useful reading materials to better understand and support what will hopefully be a huge change in how black people are treated in the US and globally. I’ve also included a link to an article about what you can do here in the UK to help that also goes into our own history of violence and injustice against black people.

And I know that this might be a lot and I know you might be on YouTube looking for distraction and that is fair, that is really fair, all I ask is that while you’re scrolling through the comments of this video- which I can’t be the only one that does that- just check out my pinned comment right at the top and take some time to click on one link, sign one petition, read one article. If nothing else, I’ve left some other links to really useful videos; I can’t say that I enjoyed the videos but I really appreciated them and I learned a lot from them.

Some really useful perspectives and a lot of really useful information and next steps. So please take care of yourself, take care of one another. Thank you so much and enjoy the video. Hello my love’s and welcome back to the studio for another self-imposed creative project meant to build our portfolios, explore different subjects or concepts or just creative ideas and to have more fun with art, keep it fresh and to potentially prepare ourselves for real client work. Last time around, I worked on a large-scale painting and while I did that I set you the challenge to do the same, to work on a bigger scale than you would usually do, something nature-related, and we will look at some of your fantastic work later on in the video.

For now, we have a new project to work on as voted for by you via the poll that I left on the video last time around.

And that, as the title suggests, is a design for a cover or covers for a sketchbook or notebook. I’m thinking like Papier, that brand comes to mind, Mossery do great stationery as well and…I don’t know who else…. I’m sure you guys can leave suggestions below.

I am one of those people that will just buy anything that looks really nice, any stationery that looks too nice to actually use it. But with that all said, let’s get into the brief. All right, so let’s say two to four designs- we’ll see how I get on- standard size so around A5 I guess, front and back cover and the spine as well. Let me get an example just so I can explain this a bit better- and excuse my un-ironed shirt and tracksuit bottoms, we are on lockdown still so, you know, I’m being as professional as I can be from home 😉 But let’s have a look at this gorgeous sketchbook/notebook that I bought from September Wildflowers also known as a Ruth Speer, this is just one of my favorite things in the world.

I’m always in awe of her work and also the quality and finish of the products that she puts out so this is a great example.

As I was saying, front cover, spine and back cover. I might also, as she’s done, leave the inside cover blank but if I can think of something to do in here and I will do. And I’ll leave a link below to Ruth and her work because take a look at that, look at that! Do I need to say anything else? Is it insane that a notebook can give me goosebumps?
One day I aspire to be able to do something this amazing.

Right and then other than that I think theme-wise we will leave the designs open, as I normally do to be honest.

But I think because these are going to be multi-purpose sketchbooks or notebooks, think like doodling, planning, note-taking, studying, scheduling…whatever you want to use it for basically- it all goes. Now looking at brands like Papier and Mossery, even Society6 for popular design ideas, I’m seeing a lot of patterns, a lot of repeated patterns; florals, animals, marble as well seems quite popular. And I also like the idea of having a space for your name on the front like composition notebooks. I just like that as a design feature so I think that’s something that I will include. And then otherwise, I’m seeing a lot of designs kind of based on hobbies and places… Right I’m also taking the leaf from Teoh Yi Chie’s book for his recent ‘A-Z ways to fill a sketchbook’ drawing challenge thing.

I’m gonna check out the website nounsstarting.com for ideas of places or objects or things I can theme at my designs on.

I’ll also leave a link below to Teoh’s series that I’m talking about because it’s just such a great way to come up with ideas for your sketchbook. And you might already have some ideas in mind. If you apply it to things that are relevant in your own life; so just the things that you might be regularly using a sketchbook or notebook for anyway. If you’re at school you might be using an academic planner in which case you might want to have this design based on stationery or maybe things based on your favourite subject at school, you could be an avid gardener and keep a gardening journal and maybe you would want the design to be based on the tools that you use out there or your favourite plants..

Let’s see… you could keep a dream journal, gratitude journal, if you’re studying like faces or and anatomy in your sketchbook a lot, maybe you could do a design based on that. And these are just ideas obviously we’re not actually making these books but it’s a good way to get ideas on what you could do a cover design on.

It’s just a starting point to help you narrow down what you’re gonna do. Otherwise you could base your designs on your favorite places, places you’ve been a holiday, your hobbies, pets, anything really. I’m just trying to throw out some ideas just to give you something to narrow it down to. At the end of the day you’re trying to make it a notebook that you would be drawn to. So I’m gonna combine a few of these different things, the popular designs, random nouns that I can come up with and things that I’m interested in to come up with a few design ideas.

And I like to map out my messy ideas on just cheap dot-grid paper. Okay here’s what I’ve got. I was actually quite stumped from the beginning just thinking about my own interests and popular designs, as I said, and just what I might want to use the notebook for. So I ended up reverting to the usual, typical tried-and-true… just kind of looking around the room aimlessly until my eyes fell on something that inspired me and I ended up seeing my little matryoshka over there, got one over there as well, and I’ve done artwork based on them before so I thought maybe it’d be a nice idea to do more like a doodle watercolour and ink style repeated pattern with those I think that’d be a cute one.

And let’s see… okay, so then I’ve written ‘strips of leaves’ which I think will make more sense once I’ve actually done it- and if it doesn’t make sense, back-up; I might just do another tried-and-true for me, a landscape. I think a nice landscape could make a really good cover for a notebook, something peaceful, something you just want to dive into. And okay, a porcelain squid. Bit of a weird one but I think this might be my favourite if it goes right.

So I thought about how much I like porcelain style patterns, like and the blue ink on a white background. And then my next idea was squid and I thought ‘oh put those together’. Ink, squid, porcelain. So yeah. if I can do that, if I can pull that off, I think that would be a really cool one and that might end up being my favourite.
And then…. floral.

I tried to stay away from it but I’m gonna have to do a floral design. I just… if I think about what I would like, what I would pick up, a floral pattern is the first thing that I would go to.
And also I think right at the forefront of my mind I have these postcards just sitting here on my desk. I just recently used a set of postcards like this to send to patrons with the latest reward bundles that they get. These are William Morris floral pattern designs and I’m really inspired to do something similar to that. Then all the rest of these ideas, I’ve got quite a few here, they could all still stand as great things to do art on in the future so they’re just gonna get put on a drawing ideas list but I have on Trello. So I have four ideas, still not sure if I’m going to do all of them but the next thing I will do is maybe sketch them out into thumbnails, really quick ones.

And this is probably the most important for the floral and the squid designs as I think those could get quite complicated. I also have to see if what I’ve got in my head would make sense on paper before I commit to the big thing. Not too much detail in this at all, this is just how I work, especially if it’s a personal project and not a client. I like to take an idea and dive right into it and learn from the first attempts rather than planning too much.

And that is more a flaw on my part- lack of patience- so if you can or need to plan more go for it.

Now I will say, even though these are quite rough- in some cases very rough- sketches, I am now feeling a lot more confident about the direction I’ll be going in with these pieces of work. I want to reiterate that if you’re the kind of person that really needs to plan, if you want to do some more sketches, if you want to do studies for references of whatever you’re drawing, you might want to do a full-scale draft of your piece of art or a digital mock-up maybe to test different colours… the more the merrier.

Go for it! I am realising more and more I’m just more of a seat-of-your-pants type person when it comes to art. Which is really a good thing. I am willing at this point now to just dive right into it do the actual thing and if it goes wrong I then take on whatever lessons I’ve learned from that and try to do better next time.

I think for all of them they’re going to be repeated patterns so I’m going to use a technique that I learned in a Skillshare class a while ago and have used a couple of times since.

So in all cases except for the leaf pattern which you’ll see why later, I’m gonna use a canvas size of about 3/4 the size of an a5 sheet. Let me show you what I’m talking about. Using this method, I think I’m gonna make my art about this size, so with my piece of work about that size, I’ve got the whole pattern here and then it’ll repeat here and here and here and here. And then if you want to make your pattern repeat more times, you could have a smaller canvas and have the repeat come here, here, here. If that makes sense.

And then for my leaf design, as I was saying, I just want that to be like a full thing and I’ll just repeat that on the front and on the back. And then there’s the option if you’re not using a repeated pattern at all and then you would use something along the lines of this template.

So you’re looking at- to figure out the size of your canvas – get the dimensions of the front of the book that you want to do so let’s just say that this is the size of an a5 sheet of paper- I know this is very rough, I hope you can understand what I’m saying- and we’ll just do that as the front, and then you would add a one centimetre spine, and then you would just do the same thing; a5 sheet for the back, and you want to do it really well you can also add just a little bit of extra around the edge for bleed; I would just say like the quarter-inch so that if you were to get this printed, there’s enough room around the edge for them to chop it and make it nice and neat without having white lines around the edge. So hopefully that’s made a bit of sense about how big you want to make your art in relation to the actual notebook, if you’re making a cover for a notebook about this size and whether you want to use a pattern or not and how small you want the pattern to be on the notebook.

I really hope that was clear.

With that said, I think other than that for the design on the front like this, I think I’ll just add that afterward digitally. So I think we’re about ready to start. I started with the one that essentially cared about the least which was the more doodley design, the nesting doll pattern. I used that one as a way to reacquaint myself with this pattern-making technique and because of that, I did rush the painting itself. I basically just wanted to get to the ones I really wanted to do.

So this was a good warm-up and away from me to test my process in a lower pressure setting. And one thing I did learn was the importance of cutting my paper straight when I move things around because lining them up digitally afterwards was really, really difficult. So if you’re doing multiple designs, in fact, however many designs you’re doing, I’d really encourage you to start with a more throwaway one, a practice one just to figure out exactly what you’re doing.

Now for the fun part, the ones I’ve actually been looking forward to, a more detailed, more my style work. The good thing about the falling leaf design is that I knew I could cut it differently- and I probably could have gotten away with not cutting it at all- and I wouldn’t have to worry too much about lining things up which, after the struggle that I’d had with the last one, felt like a refreshing choice for my second painting.

And that is more like it! I really like that! I will scan and set that file up later and talk you through that when I do, but for now it’s time to move on to the next two designs which I’m hoping will be finished by the end of the day tomorrow. Wish me luck! Well that was both fun and exhausting.

Now that the hard part is over, let me show you how I would set these up to print as a5 notebook covers. So after scanning all of the images in, I open up a new canvas in Photoshop that is the size that I laid out earlier. So taking into account the front and back covers, the spine and extra room for bleed around the edges, I ended up making my bleed area about 0.5 centimeters all the way around, but you don’t really need this unless you plan on actually printing this.

I’m just trying to do things how I would if it were an actual commission.

So my canvas works out to be 31.6 by 22 centimeters and I made sure I was working in CMYK colour profile. I also set the DPI to 600- and again, this isn’t necessary unless you plan on printing it and you want the colours to come out accurately and you want it to come out nice and sharp. Once that was all set up, I added in some guidelines, so that 0.5 centimeter bleed border and then 1 centimeter to spine in the middle and that will help me see it as a flattened out book cover and place things in the right places, and then I’m ready to drag in my first scan.

First I need to adjust the colours to most accurately match the original painting, I also get rid of the white background so I can have the freedom to change the background colour behind the pattern to anything I’d like, and the last thing I do before repeating the pattern is just go through the scan clearing up any blemishes, any dust particles and smudges and stuff like that, and I use a combination of the Spot Healing Brush tool and the regular brush tool and the eraser to get rid of the join where I cut and stuck together the paper.

Then I duplicate that layer and start lining it up. If I’ve cut and stuck and scanned everything straight, it shouldn’t be too hard. When I’ve got close enough match, I merge the layer do a bit more spot correction to mask the join and repeat the process. And then it’s just a case of adding those finishing touches and Bob’s your uncle!

Same again for the other two which I just finished this morning, And I’m so happy with how they came out, especially the squid one. I want to find a way to print them or use somewhere just because I feel like they’ve come out so well. Hey! Future me here again. I have in fact had some dot-grid notebooks made up with these designs.

I am currently also in the process of looking at turning them into sketchbooks but you can see more about that in next week’s vlog. For now, these notebooks are up on the shop already along with a load of new prints and stickers, and there are raffle tickets for just one pound where nine people will be picked at random to receive one of these original paintings.

All profits are will be going towards supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and information on where that money will be going is in the product description on my website. The link to my website is down below. I set out to make notebook covers that I would buy and- apart from the first one which was a bit burgh- I definitely would!

I love these and I’m really happy with them. And I think that that is the magic of setting yourself projects like this, you get to really explore your creativity and make something that you’re proud of. So speaking of that, let’s have a look at some of your fantastic work from last month’s brief; a nature-related painting on a larger scale than you would usually work. And there was so much great work to choose from this time, I really struggled to narrow it down to just a few. But let’s start with the biggest and boldest.

This is by Ellie Rush who has done this mural for her sister of a prickly pear.

I love the colours that she’s used and I just love the style, it’s really giving me like a Palm Springs, poolside vibe I love. Oh! Sara shared this beautiful night sky painting and whatever your secret is for painting clouds, please let me know because these are done perfectly. Lovely watercolour work from Merz D, beautiful and delicate.

What I liked the most is how they’ve suggested how the flowers are going into the distance with just really simple marks, I think that’s a really clever idea.

Oh! Oh my gosh, this one by grace- am I right in thinking that you’re 13? Because this is incredible. I love this one as well by Trenita, just brilliant artwork by a brilliant artist, you have to check out the rest of her work.

And the same goes for everyone else I’m mentioning, their links will be below, go and show them some love and give them a follow. I think we’ll do one more. This is so hard. This is so hard to narrow it down. And the ones that I haven’t shown, please check out the Minni emission hashtag because there is so much great work.

But I think we will finish on Carlotta’s work. Really expressive, big, beautiful work and when you get into the details you get to really see a certain depth to it as well.

So yeah, great work guys, I had so much fun looking at your art this time around. And if you want to take part, this time the brief is to make a notebook cover. You can do just the front cover if that works for you or you can do like I did and go the whole hog; do the front cover, back cover and a spine.

You could even do an inside cover.

I’d love to see some pattern designs but really what I want to see is a cover of a notebook that you would by yourself. You have two and a half weeks to create it and share on Instagram with the #minniemission and I look forward to seeing what you come up with. You might get featured in next month’s video. But for the meantime, thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you soon for the next one.

Bye!

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