Watercolor Painting Practice : Basic Landscape Elements Hi everyone! After practicing just “landscapes” in general - going from simple black and white value studies to color - I thought that it would be helpful to tackle individual elements. If you haven’t, please check out my very first “study
Watercolor Painting Practice : Basic Landscape Elements Hi everyone! After practicing just “landscapes” in general - going from simple black and white value studies to color - I thought that it would be helpful to tackle individual elements. If you haven’t, please check out my very first “study
Watercolor Painting Practice : Basic Landscape Elements Hi everyone! After practicing just “landscapes” in general - going from simple black and white value studies to color - I thought that it would be helpful to tackle individual elements. If you haven’t, please check out my very first “study
Watercolor Painting Practice : Basic Landscape Elements Hi everyone! After practicing just “landscapes” in general - going from simple black and white value studies to color - I thought that it would be helpful to tackle individual elements. If you haven’t, please check out my very first “study
Six paintings created for an exhibit on Jeju Island, South Korea, showing volcanic rocks in surreal colors and typical Jejudo houses floating in front of dreamy cloudscapes, now as a set of six prints. The art exhibit focused on the “color palette” of Jeju Island, with artists showcasing unique aspects of the island, from volcanic hills to mythology and magic. My personal focus was on dreamlike landscapes and traditional architecture, with my favorite pieces now turned into prints. This print set comes with six prints total - three sets of two, perfect for decorating small nooks and corners, desk walls, or anywhere that needs a splash of subtle color, as these are color coordinated to work as a set. - “Dream of Jeju I” and “Dream of Jeju II” Traditional houses in acrylics. - “Sunrise Peak Melon” and “Sunrise Peak Mandarin” - two interpretations of Seongsan Ilchulbong, Sunrise Peak, the famous volcanic crater on the East side of the island, painted in oil pastels. - “Ocean Palette - Ice” and “Ocean Palette - Lavender” - two interpretations of the rocky coasts of Jeju Island, with Seongsan Ilchulbong in the distance. The individual prints are 14 x 15 cm (5.5" x 6"), printed on 300g Montblanc paper.
Evelyne Park's illustration blog. Korean skincare and makeup reviews, daily drawings and art projects.
News on the makeup illustration front before the month is over! Because I went to Seoul over the weekend, this month's end is coming on way too suddenly! I'd planned to get at least one more makeup review up, but yeah, here's a quick work update instead. While what I call my monthly salary as a freelance illustrator comes 90% from things like textbook illustrations, coloring books, layouting and other large serial orders from companies, there's also these fun little projects in-between that I love so much! This is another example - an illustration for new skincare brand 'Purpletale'! Check out their international website here, or their Korean one here. The illustration depicts their current product range - 8 products in total, mostly in the skincare department, but there's a BB cream and primer, too. We went for a 'flatlay' look, and as the brand's names are all (really adorably!) inspired by stories, books and fairytales, I added details like book pages and book illustrations in the background. Which gave us the possibility of featuring the main ingredients in the form of a textbook-like illustration beneath the products. Nifty, right? Patterns on book covers! I had so much fun with these, especially since this time, I didn't use any sort of outlines except faint pencil guides. It makes for a softer, polished look. Adding color on a large format (and for watercolor and me, anything beyond a postcard is a large format) without the paper going all wavy or the overall color scheme falling apart requires layering. As in, I started with mostly gray and sepia hues, and then slowly added blues (the pigments for those are softer than most purple tones) to define shadows and lights. You can't 'erase' what you've already put on paper, so a careful and slooow approach works best. Only when the general form of all individual objects and the lighting are sorted out, the brand's name-sake color came into play. While I wanted the overall look to be soft and elegant, I still needed the borders to be crisp or the whole thing would just look like a mint-and-purple cloud. :') So my smallest brush carried the picture on its, maybe, three hairs. (I've since bought a new one, it got all worn out over the year. RIP.) For the digital close-ups, I scanned the A3 picture on 600 DPI, did the whole post-processing marathon in Photoshop, and then added additional color layers to play up the purple and mint. I was especially excited for the shiny, sleek packaging design of the brand in combination with the more subdued book pages in the back. Writing with a brush is always fun, too! The Neck Cream has to be my favorite part. I wanted to let the page in the background look like something out of an illustrated fairy tale book or a high-fantasy novel, and am happy with how the white spaces turned out. For some of the white-on-color details I used a white pigment with a nib pen to get a cleaner result. This is the banner collage for the website. I didn't know about the precise format ahead of time, so there was a quite a bit of cutting, masking and moving about involved. I got the real thing, too! These sheetmasks are HUGE. Seriously, have a comparison picture with my grumpy cat Hedwig. Already excited to use this multi-faceted product. The 5 Steps To Lovely Skin includes a Cleansing Foam, an Ampoule, a Sheet Mask (of course!), a Facial Cream and a Neck Cream, so it's like a deluxe sample set perfect for traveling. .... now I need the time to go traveling, though. That's it for this little look at work! See you again in April! Just a little preview for the next sticker set here: A spring edition, but psst! ;) Should be ready and printed in about two weeks. You can find my previous stickers on my Etsy shop here~
Watercolor Painting Practice : Basic Landscape Elements Hi everyone! After practicing just “landscapes” in general - going from simple black and white value studies to color - I thought that it would be helpful to tackle individual elements. If you haven’t, please check out my very first “study
If you've ever scanned in a watercolor drawing (or any image with soft hues and delicate color transitions) you probably know the horror of seeing your digital image looking VERY different from the original. Where black-and-white images or strong colors are quite easy to edit, techniques like water
Watercolor Painting Practice :Basic Landscape ElementsHi everyone!After practicing just “landscapes” in general - going from simple black and white value studies to color - I thought that it would be helpful to tackle individual elements.If you haven’t, please check out my very first “study session” collection about landscape painting in watercolor, where I give some general tips and insights about what I’d learned in those first tries. This is part two!
Watercolor Painting Practice : Basic Landscape Elements Hi everyone! After practicing just “landscapes” in general - going from simple black and white value studies to color - I thought that it would be helpful to tackle individual elements. If you haven’t, please check out my very first “study
Travel Sketchbook, Thailand, Ayutthaya While I wasn't able to sketch a lot while in Thailand (try getting everyone to sit still for long enough!) I took all the pictures I could. The most inspiring place we visited was Ayutthaya , the temple and city ruins near Bangkok. I love historica
Let's be honest: This isn't a "day" of work. The nature of illustration commissions makes them a long process spanning days or weeks, from sketches to last corrections. But: This would be an ideal day in the life of an illustrator, aka my ideal work day! I'll guide you through the entire p
Have you ever tracked your time? The practice of noting down exactly when you did what, and for how long, during any given day, can give valuable insight into your own habits . It shows where, often unexpectedly, a lot of time is 'lost'. While I hate the expression of 'wasted time' (per
Illustration Project: Korean Music Albums It started simple enough: A musician friend of mine needed a cover illustration for a single release. The song (and several follow-ups) had a Jeju Island theme , so I felt moderately confident in pulling this off. Fast-forward to a year later,
Planner Stickers - A New Creative Obsession I've been a planner and journal keeper for as long as I can remember , but only recently did I get into planner decoration and 'pretty' bullet journal layouts. As a creator of stickers, the logical next step (about five minutes after falling do
Since I started this little art blog at the end of January, I've been drawing monthly illustrations of my cat Hedwig for a series I call 'Cat Advice'. Every month, there's a new motive with a couple of wise words courtesy of my cat. Based on those cat illustrations I create both printable calenda
Since I started this little art blog at the end of January, I've been drawing monthly illustrations of my cat Hedwig for a series I call 'Cat Advice'. Every month, there's a new motive with a couple of wise words courtesy of my cat. Based on those cat illustrations I create both printable calenda
Have you ever tracked your time? The practice of noting down exactly when you did what, and for how long, during any given day, can give valuable insight into your own habits . It shows where, often unexpectedly, a lot of time is 'lost'. While I hate the expression of 'wasted time' (per
Let's be honest: This isn't a "day" of work. The nature of illustration commissions makes them a long process spanning days or weeks, from sketches to last corrections. But: This would be an ideal day in the life of an illustrator, aka my ideal work day! I'll guide you through the entire p
Let's be honest: This isn't a "day" of work. The nature of illustration commissions makes them a long process spanning days or weeks, from sketches to last corrections. But: This would be an ideal day in the life of an illustrator, aka my ideal work day! I'll guide you through the entire p
If you've ever scanned in a watercolor drawing (or any image with soft hues and delicate color transitions) you probably know the horror of seeing your digital image looking VERY different from the original. Where black-and-white images or strong colors are quite easy to edit, techniques like water
Planner Stickers - A New Creative Obsession I've been a planner and journal keeper for as long as I can remember , but only recently did I get into planner decoration and 'pretty' bullet journal layouts. As a creator of stickers, the logical next step (about five minutes after falling do
Have you ever tracked your time? The practice of noting down exactly when you did what, and for how long, during any given day, can give valuable insight into your own habits . It shows where, often unexpectedly, a lot of time is 'lost'. While I hate the expression of 'wasted time' (per
Planner Stickers - A New Creative Obsession I've been a planner and journal keeper for as long as I can remember , but only recently did I get into planner decoration and 'pretty' bullet journal layouts. As a creator of stickers, the logical next step (about five minutes after falling do
Travel Sketchbook, Thailand, Ayutthaya While I wasn't able to sketch a lot while in Thailand (try getting everyone to sit still for long enough!) I took all the pictures I could. The most inspiring place we visited was Ayutthaya , the temple and city ruins near Bangkok. I love historica
If you've ever scanned in a watercolor drawing (or any image with soft hues and delicate color transitions) you probably know the horror of seeing your digital image looking VERY different from the original. Where black-and-white images or strong colors are quite easy to edit, techniques like water
Illustration Project: Korean Music Albums It started simple enough: A musician friend of mine needed a cover illustration for a single release. The song (and several follow-ups) had a Jeju Island theme , so I felt moderately confident in pulling this off. Fast-forward to a year later,
It's been over three years since I moved to Korea, but more than six years since discovering Korean skincare and makeup. Here's a couple of lessons I've learned along the way on how to control my spending in Korea, how to get the products I love for cheaper and how to take advantage of being a resident instead of a tourist. DISCLAIMER: I'm NOT affiliated with any of the brands or products mentioned. Just love me my makeup and skincare for cheap. :) I remember the excitement of my first (uninformed) K-Beauty online purchase years ago. Of waiting for three weeks for that one package. And then I remember going to South Korea for the first time and SPLURGING. Back then (five years ago) online shopping wasn't yet as convenient and cheap, especially to my home country Switzerland. So of course, I had to go all-out in Korea and stock up on everything and anything. Perfectly reasonable: It's all cheaper than in online shops. No shipping! Products that can't be found online are everywhere Swatching and testing in store to prevent color mishaps make decisions easy Really good reasons to spend a bit more, right? Well, these reasons don't apply once you live here. Once I moved to Korea, I had to adjust my shopping habits - most of that happened subconsciously over the first year. Suddenly, there was no time limit, and no reason to buy a lot at once. Gradually, I learned enough Korean to find better deals than in the tourist districts. Slowly, my perception changed from 'oh, a cream for just 20000' to 'Heol (=Korean for 'WTF'), a cream for 20000\?!' - a combination of lower living costs and lower salaries made what once looked cheap just standard, or even expensive! Temptation was everywhere. I had to stop myself from jumping at new products and shiny packaging all the time. If you're in Korea for more than just a quick vacation, here are five tips to save on skincare and makeup, while still getting the products you'd wanted anyway. CHOOSE YOUR FOCUS : While it's great fun to buy anything that catches your eye on a vacation, I did get overwhelmed trying to choose what to buy once I started living in Korea permanently. THERE'S JUST TOO MANY BRANDS. The easiest trick for me to stay in control of my beauty cravings was zeroing in on the brands that worked for me in the past: Brands my skin loved, brands where the formulations have never (or barely ever) disappointed me, or that fit my general price class. I made the conscious decision to ignore the rest. Yes, there's cute packaging and nice formulations and interesting colors just about everywhere - but I'll see those one day by chance, while shopping with friends or by getting recommendations. Brands I focus on: Innisfree (my skin loves their stuff, no allergies, no sensitivity; great products for simple makeup looks), Mamonde (their cheap sheet mask line is holy grail status for me, plus all their 'Rose' products), Sidmool (for natural skincare products like oils) and I keep my eyes on Espoir and VDL for the rare splurge on high-quality color or base makeup. Focusing on only a couple of brands that work for your skin, your sense of aesthetic, your budget and preferences in ecology friendliness/animal ingredients and so on keeps you from impulse buying duds, makes it easy to keep track of sales and interesting releases and to accumulate member benefits... which leads us to: GET THOSE MEMBERSHIPS : As soon as you have an Alien Registration Card number, you can register for brand memberships and VIP programs. Depending on the brand, you'll get perks from higher sales (30% instead of 10% or 20%, for example) to points (that you can use to buy products in the future) to free gifts or birthday presents. Who doesn't love free stuff? 'Greentea Club' Gifts from Innisfree I've been using up: - A set of their super-food skincare with a Cleanser, Skin and Lotion - A mixed bag of essences and creams and cleansers - A small bottle of perfume I've been on a no-buy from the beginning of November till now, beginning of February - but still got enough new products for free thanks to those memberships and by just using beauty points to buy specific stuff I've run out of. I'm a member of Amore Pacific (Iope, Mamonde, Laneige, Aritaum, Innisfree, Etude...) and then again specifically a member of Espoir, Aritaum and Innisfree for some extra VVIP perks. You gain VVIP (or Greentea Club for innisfree) status after a certain amount of money spent - which happened more or less automatically due to me buying skincare and makeup as gifts for whenever I went home to Switzerland. But even just the basic membership allows you to collect points, get birthday perks (extra points, 40% coupons...) and additional sale days throughout the month. Recycling tip: Return your empty bottles and jars to Innisfree shops during their membership days to get a ton of beauty points! Returning them on normal days will still give you some points, too. App recommendation: I downloaded the 'Beauty Point' app by accident when I actually wanted the Aritaum one. But no regrets! You get free points just for signing up, and can check the app for daily point events. BE PATIENT - A SALE WILL COME Those sale days I mentioned? Every road-shop brand has them. Mostly over a weekend once month, with different discount rates depending on products and membership status. Patience is the key! In my first year, if a brand came out with gorgeous looking lipstick colors, or new sheet masks, or just anything shiny, I'd pounce on it (as far as my wallet allowed, sigh). But the pattern soon became clear: A couple of weeks after a new release, those products would have an event sale, mostly a 1+1, to keep interest high after the first publicity flurry was over. Products that are higher up in the price range, like essences, serums and creams, don't do the buy-one-get-one-free but they will offer special sets or go on sale once a month. Plan ahead, buy your pricier skincare products like creams and essences on sale days or with birthday coupons, and take advantage of the event sales for lip products, eye shadows, mascara, facial mists, sheet masks... This actually works on a smaller scale if you're a tourist, too. If you're in Korea for, let's say, 10 days, don't just buy all your things on the first day. You'll see the same stores everywhere, and at least some of your planned purchases will probably go on sale while you're in the country. CHOOSE YOUR STORE ...or what I refer to as my 'hunting grounds'. Rawr! Very likely, once you visit Korea, you'll be checking out shopping paradises in Seoul like Myeongdeong or Hongdae. There's stores of the same brands on pretty much every street. They aren't all the same! Check out different stores in areas you frequent. Their product range will come in different sizes (less or more shades), new releases will arrive sooner or later and samples will be more or less generously given. Some shops seem to ALWAYS be out of swatch-ready tester products. Some shops are marketed towards tourists. Their sales assistants are mostly chosen for their language skills in Chinese and/or English, with lots of part-timers during vacation months. Large flag-ship stores will have the prettiest decor and the newest releases, but will also be the first to sell out during events. I chose 'my' shops after learning some basic Korean. Being able to just ask questions and get actual useful information instead of just a promotional speech was a criteria. If you like to get recommendations for colors, be careful: Choose a store where you like the staff's makeup! Seriously! There's a tendency to just recommend the lightest base makeup shade and the bestselling lipstick color, no matter if it suits you, so finding a shop with staff that knows their stuff is essential. Perks of going to 'your' shop: You know how everything's organized, you can get to know the permanent staff, have fun chatting - and I've found they'll give you more free samples or be forgiving if you show up late to pick up your gift sets etc. There's also the whole 'deer in headlights' thing that can be avoided by being a regular customer: Once the local staff knows that you speak even a little Korean/won't try to ask questions in English, they lose that panicked look when you come through the door. ;) GO ONLINE Yes, even if you live in Korea. There's two ways of profiting from online shopping in Korea that I want to mention: Brand Websites: Most brands have 'online only' products that you can't find in physical stores. If you want to take advantage of sale days when you don't have time to run to a store, you can shop for discounted products online. There's extra large sizes of bestseller products, or refill bags for cleansers and lotions, where you get more product for your money. Perfect if you want to re-buy your staples! Third-Party Sellers: Sites like the Korean gmarket, wemakeprice, ticketmonster and so on make it possible to find products at their sale price literally all the time. These third-party sellers are perfect for brands where you're not VIP member but would like to make one-time purchases. They allow you to use the site's general coupons for beauty products that are rarely on sale in their 'own' stores. These are the places where I go after limited editions (which are either sold-out or already discontinued) and get my higher-end makeup products for reduced prices. Why buy that VDL primer for 22000\ in store when I can get it for 16000\ online? As you can see, I love makeup and skincare. I have a kinda-beauty blog just because I want a reason to try pretty stuff and take pictures of it. But since I can't really prioritize beauty expenses (that honor goes to house payments, art supplies, family visits, FOOD :D) AND don't want to compromise when it comes to quality, I've become quite adapt at finding good deals, tempering my urges and planning ahead. If you're on a budget, I hope these tips can help you! Do you have some tips to stay on top of your beauty spending? How do you balance saving and 'treat yo self' bliss? Have you been to Korea and gotten some shopping done? :) Thanks for reading! <3
Travel Sketchbook, Thailand, Ayutthaya While I wasn't able to sketch a lot while in Thailand (try getting everyone to sit still for long enough!) I took all the pictures I could. The most inspiring place we visited was Ayutthaya , the temple and city ruins near Bangkok. I love historica
Planner Stickers - A New Creative Obsession I've been a planner and journal keeper for as long as I can remember , but only recently did I get into planner decoration and 'pretty' bullet journal layouts. As a creator of stickers, the logical next step (about five minutes after falling do
Custom portrait art painted in watercolors and acrylics on unique 100% cotton paper, with beautiful paper edges typical for handmade paper. Character art commission in traditional watercolor media. While I usually paint on smoother paper or panels for larger character art commissions, for expressive portraits and close-ups, this Khadi watercolor paper has captured my attention. The sample here shows a portrait of Shadowheart from Baldur's Gate 3 (sold), painted in aquarelle colored pencils, watercolors, and final touches in acrylics. Perfect for gifts or as memories of DnD games... As I'll need a detailed description and some reference images (i.e. a moodboard) feel free to send me a message first to clarify any questions you might have and go over details, or send me an email at [email protected] I mostly paint character art for Dungeons and Dragons settings, but I'm also familiar with Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, and Baldur's Gate settings if you're looking for OC portraits. KHADI PAPER: A very heavy 320 gsm paper, handmade, acid free, fairly traded and 100% cotton paper made from purely recycled materials. This paper beautifully absorbs water-based media and the handmade paper edges add a unique touch, making this a paper that looks great presented even without a frame. A5, 6x8 inches PAINTING TIME: Once we've discussed details of the character portrait and exchanged references where necessary, I first create a pencil sketch to get the portrait angle right. After the sketch has been approved, painting takes about a week to 10 days as I let layers dry in-between painting sessions and add more details. Originals are only shipped with tracking, via EMS international express shipping from South Korea, usually arriving within 5-10 business days. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have at [email protected] :)
Spring is my favorite season - not only because summer on Jeju Island and South Korea, in general, is a heat fest. And bug fest. But let's not go there. (Yet.) So spring is that perfect moment when everything's in full bloom, nature is pretty and survivable, and spring colors are back!
I love summers in Korea. They are incredibly hot and humid, but something about warm temperatures even at night and constant sunshine makes me feel all happy and cozy. Here are my favorite things to survive those hot days on Jeju Island and make them enjoyable. This post contains affiliate links,
If you've ever scanned in a watercolor drawing (or any image with soft hues and delicate color transitions) you probably know the horror of seeing your digital image looking VERY different from the original. Where black-and-white images or strong colors are quite easy to edit, techniques like water
