What's your neighbourhood like?

Last Thursday night my partner Marc and I decided to get out-and-about and we headed towards funky Collingwood, where the Design Files together with Lamington Drive Editions were launching their Neighbourhoods Calendar.

It was great to see some creative people about and gorgeous illustrations of some of Melbourne's neighbourhoods by talented illustrators Kat Macleod, Kat Chadwick, Beci Orpin, James Gulliver Hancock, Good Wives and Warriors, Pauline Matthewman, Rik Lee, Jane Reiseger, Marcela Restrepo, Madeleine Stamer, Neryl Walker and Webuyyourkids.

One gallery wall featured a beautiful illustration by Kat Chadwick of Melbourne and its surrounding suburbs. The gallery visitors were asked to decorate a flag and spike it on the map, pointing out which 'hood they belong to.

I also spotted limited edition prints by Kat Macleod, who's work I truly admire. Her beautiful illustrations captured my heart many years ago.

I think the calendar is a great idea, and it even includes a cute illustration of our new hood- Yarraville- by Jane Reiseger, so I had to buy one for myself of course! What a wonderful way to (re)discover Melbourne in 2011.

Back into the thick of it...

So.... where do I begin? For starters, I'm back in Australia, in the marvelous city of Melbourne. I've thrown myself into the thick of it straight away, by going back to university to finish my postgraduate studies, almost the moment I got back.

I am attending the Victorian College of the Arts and Music and am having a wonderful time! Critical and theoretical (art history) class is keeping me busy writing essays, but I'm having the most fun in my printmaking elective as well as developing my work in my Contemporary Art Practice tutorial. Luckily, I have one lecturer, Tony, who was teaching me three years ago and he remembers my previous work... it was so great to show him how far I've come in the last few years!
As an example, here is some of the work I was doing in 2007... I found these in my old 'studio' - my parents house which is a bit of a storage right now!


I created maybe 7 of these repetitive black and white paintings... I'm still reflecting on them, but I guess i was trying to express the idea that there is no black & white in this world, just shades of gray, and I was trying to create some sort of order out of this.

It was pointed out to me that there is a comparison between these to the work I did in Costa Rica with the leaf forms. Here is a new one I have just completed. What do you think? There is definitely that repetition and black and white streak happening...

I'm going to keep going with these and see where they take me. I'm loving the abstract forms in them, and hope to develop this further through collage and print making. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

In other news, I'm inspired by the buzz of Melbourne - I've only been back for three weeks and I was able to attend the huge Melbourne Art Fair at the beautiful Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton. My head was spinning as my lovely mum and I got to trawl through two levels of art with over 900 artists represented by 80 national and international galleries.

Later in the week I was summoned by my friend Kat, amazing designer of Live Like Kat boutique jewellery, who was showcasing at the Life In Style exhibition at Flemington Racecourse. This boutique trade event featured over 300 selected exhibitors featuring homeware, giftware, lifestyle and kids products. I could not believe the talent and energy in the rooms, such amazing creations in one hub - I was so inspired by everything that I was madly jotting my own ideas when I got home!

And now, I'm off to do more ink drawings and essay writing. I wonder what Melbourne will bring me next - hopefully less rain!

Please note my etsy shop will be down until some time in October as I wait for all my belongings and art to arrive by ship from Vancouver. Thanks for waiting!

Creatively yours,

Maja
www.majawolnik.com

Illustration Friday - Slither

This week, I started my illustration classes at Emily Carr University - how exciting! I thought I would combine my homework for the class with this week's IF challenge - slither.

I once had a dream that I had a pet snake, which would wrap itself around my arm. It was during a time in my life when I was going through a lot of personal change and realizations... The black silvery snake represents that very dark side of me, that even I hate. I guess I was subconsciously coming to terms with it, letting the snake become my friend and stayed wrapped around my wrist, to remind me that I can be poisonous, but I can tame that. I later learned through a dream dictionary that snakes represent transformation - funny that!

This image was created using pencil, and I used ovals instead of normal shading to give my composition form. I think it adds something unique to this image, very fitting for snake like textures.

Enjoy!

Journals - Vancouver Series

Do you love a good journal? I do, especially one with a really cute cover on it, that motivates me to pick it up, start writing and share my most intimate thoughts.

I love how a beautiful journal can make you feel, so I've taken on a little personal project, to create some of my very own journal designs.

I am working on a collection of these, inspired by the one and only city of Vancouver... and all its little quirks... like the relentless rain... Here is a sneak peek of the first two designs:

I illustrated the images by hand, scanned them and converted them to vectors, then applied colour using Illustrator. I'm having SO much FUN creating this series!

Would you pick up one of these in a store? Please let me know what you think? I would love to hear your feedback!

Maja

Recently published illustrations

I've come to realise that I have not shared some of my successes of recent times: a number of my illustrations have been published!

Here is a sketch I did for a Summer Haircare article in the Summer Issue of alive Australia, followed by the final illustration done in Illustrator.

I also had the opportunity to illustrate some exercises, which was a bit tricky, but fun!



And lastly, I was thrilled to do 8 original illustrations for the Autumn Issue of alive Australia for a fantastic article about bush foods. I love drawing flowers and plants so this one was an absolute joy to create and they looked wonderful once printed!

I'm in the studio today working on some Vancouver inspired illustrations - I'll reveal them soon!

Maja

Illustration Friday - Dip

"Wiggly worm saw a dip in the road..."
I did a quick sketch in my notebook for this week's Illustration Friday topic - dip.

Messed up studio!

I've spent the last three days trying to spring clean my studio, and I'm almost there. My man found a free desk that we've dragged into the studio, which is great because I get a NEW desk to put more artsy stuff everywhere, but not so great because sadly for me this means even more room to spread the mess... This brings the studio total to 3 desks!

Before launching my new etsy shop, I spent a lot of time trying new designs on lino and softer type squares to print onto greeting cards. Unfortunately, there are days where things just don't work - my prints just wouldn't turn out. I tried using a professional baron, which didn't work, then I tried a marble rolling pin, nothing, a wooden spoon which was probably the most effective method. I even tried the piano and kitchen stools to press the lino onto my paper! The ink would not come off evenly. A very frustrating and exhausting process.


So while I look into new printmaking equipment, I spent this week being inspired by the gorgeous cherry trees in and around Vancouver. They are so pretty, with their pink flowers bunching up on branches like popcorn or fairly floss, the soft petals blowing through the wind. Spring is here! So to celebrate, I created 4 greeting cards which I am selling on etsy. Here is the whole collection on my new desk. I created the illustrations using diluted ink.

Stay tuned to hear more about the printing dilemma.

Visit my etsy shop! www.majawolnik.etsy.com

Hello,

I'm sooooooooo excited to launch my etsy shop! After what seems like an eternity, with lots of photo taking, image editing, description writing and shipping profile developing, my online store is finally up and running.

Now, instead of just gazing at my wonderful art on screen, you can use your clever little mouse to click away, order online and pay through PayPal to receive my unique creations in your hot little hands - all within a few days! Easy.

I love etsy and so should you - so follow me and start owning some of my original artwork... majawolnik.etsy.com.

- Maja

Illustration Friday - Wilderness

It's been a while since I drew something for Illustration Friday, but this week's topic of wilderness coincides with some illustrations I'm working on for an article about wild Australian bush food.

For now I am just experimenting with the style and materials - I have chosen pencil, water-soluble pencils and ink to create this drawing of a wild lime, also known as desert lime.

Mmmmm.

On the cover!

This month I'm very excited to see the new December issue of Alive come out - a logo that I designed for the Alive Awards has been published on the front cover!

When designing the logo I tried to think of the word "alive" and the products that the awards are for - natural health products. So this is how I came up with the concept of 'being alive' - I wanted to capture that feeling of joy and vibrancy of good health. The idea of a figure leaping with confidence and excitement came into my head.

I sourced a number of reference images and then sketched a silhouette. After scanning my sketches, I used Adobe Illustrator to trace the outlines and simplify the image. There was a number of revisions - maybe three to four pages with 10 concepts per page, before we settled on the final design, above.


The Alive Awards spread also features 17 illustrations that I created for each category! It is very exciting to see them all in print, in stores, in people's hands. Grab a copy this month for a very good read.

Relentless Rain

It's been raining what seems like forever in Vancouver - 10 days, 12 days? I don't know anymore.

It's been very dark, wet and depressing and I'm trying really hard not to let this weather bring me down so recently I began imagining what it would be like if the rain was rainbow coloured!

Here is an illustration I created today showing multicoloured raindrops - so much fun :) Not sure if I'm finished with this yet, I might add more drops or a background hue. What colour would the clouds be? What would the windows look like? Would the drains be filled with rainbow water? I used water-soluble pencils for the blurry, watery effect.

What would our world be without imagination and art? I hope this picture inspires you to walk down the street with your brolly (umbrella) and see what I see - glorious colours.

Enjoy!
Maja

Tree again!

Today I'm stretching and priming a 30x30" piece of canvas... not sure what I'll paint on it yet but I feel like getting my hands dirty and I wanted to use some materials I have left over from Costa Rica.

So, while I wait for the first coat to dry I thought I'd share another tree I drew a couple of weeks ago. This one is an actual tree that is on the corner of my street. I used shellac based black ink on some left over printmaking paper - probably not the best surface to use inks on as it is quite thick and sucked up all my ink instantly so was a little hard to have a nice flow.

Anyway, here it is. I'm really enjoying looking at and sketching trees (when it stops raining in Vancouver) so I think I'm going to continue and start a little tree collection.

Back to priming!

In my sketchbook

Hey its Friday and I'm stretching canvas in my studio, getting a bit distracted...

Lately I've been sketching all sorts of things in my sketchbook, so I'd thought I'd share some of them here.

I'm still fascinated by trees and their bare branches... here is one sketch i did recently. Instead of solid colour I used crosshatching lines to fill it in. I did this randomly but I think next time I will try to follow the texture of the tree.

I've seen a lot of bird illustrations around, I think they're really cute so I had to have a go at one myself. It took me a number of versions to get to this simplified form of an Australian Blue bird (that's me missing the constant chirp of birds and parrots that is prominent all over Australia.) After a few sketches I created a final colour version with my shellac based inks and brush on paper (this time just plain white drawing paper).

I'm also working on creating some Christmas illustrations. Instead of buying cards I thought I'd make them myself this year for family and friends, and that way I will build up a portfolio of images for this season, to submit to greeting card publishers for next year. This one is inspired by my boyfriend Marc-Andre who is an elf this Christmas!

Gotta go and get back into it now - enjoy!

Published!

Wow! Yesterday I got my hands on the November issue of Canada's alive magazine - some of my illustrations and designs are finally published! What started off as a short term contract has now turned into a permanent part-time role and I'm very excited to be a part of the alive publishing team.

Below is my most proud illustration for an article about eco labelling on coffee.


And here are a couple of more pages that I designed and illustrated. Alive is Canada's natural health and wellness magazine and is distributed to health food retailers nationally - 190,000 copies per month. That's a lot of eyes falling in love with my designs :)


















It's a really great read so get your free copy in stores now!

www.majawolnik.com is now online!

I'm very excited to invite you to view my new website focusing on 

art : illustration : design!

It took me quite a few months to get it all together, but here it is, loud and proud: majawolnik.com!

It's a great way to showcase my artwork and includes 6 galleries full of the exciting new work I created in Costa Rica as well as other works that have never been revealed before.

You can also browse through information about me and my work, link to interesting sites and find out about my upcoming events and exhibitions.

Click onto majawolnik.com now and buy my art!