life’s not a paragraph

i really enjoyed this class. mostly because i really enjoy drawing. haha but also because i already had some illustrative elements in my design work, and this class just reinforced illustration in my design. it definitely didn’t do that for everyone. but i enjoyed having a class that spent less time on the computer, giving me some hands on homework. sometimes i miss the foundation year’s focus on hand drawing and making everything.

in illustration we did a few projects. we started out with a condiment label where we had to draw the elements that would be featured on the label and then make the completed label on the computer. i made a creole seasoning label with a drawing of celery, onion and pepper (the “holy trinity” of creole and cajun cooking). we also did spot illustrations (small illustrations that go beneath a recipe or on a recipe card) for a cookbook theme that we came up with.

one of my favorite projects was the botanical drawing which we did at the end of the semester. we got to chose a plant and we did a watercolor illustration of the plant– its whole view, the flowering parts, inside the flowers and the roots, depending on what you had. i had a calla lily. it was really interesting because wallace (my professor) brought in a professional botanical illustrator to come and speak with us. botanical illustration is actually very scientific. you have to measure everything and make sure that each and every stroke is perfect. it’s a very interesting blend of science and art. i certainly don’t have the patience to become a true botanical illustrator, but i enjoyed my two weeks of pretending i was!