monthly makers animals / halcyon

Hey!!! So today it’s time to show you what I’ve made for Monthly Makers this month! Here’s the sneak peek I published on Instagram a few days ago: 
If you didn’t know, Monthly Makers is a creative challenge me and eleven other blogger arrange where we issue a prompt/challenge each month to inspire people to create! This month the prompt was “Animals”, and while I’ve created quite a lot of animals in clay and felt and just anything through my days, it’s pretty far away from what I’m creating currently.

Which is why my first attempt was something that actually is pretty far away from what I spend most of my time creating right now! I tried to create a collage with public domain-resources and make something with a deer and flowers. But the process was boring and the result was messy and I didn’t even finish it.

So I went on to trying to make something using my images from the aquarium in Valencia, specifically the jellyfish. I just love pictures of jellyfish?!?! So pretty.
I tried displacing them a lil bit to create something funky, but meh. Idk.

Then I remembered that there were also these jellyfishlike creatures in the aquarium! They were bioluminescent and twinkled and whirled around in the water and I remember being really inspired by their colours and shapes when I saw them. This time they made me think of a tutorial for creating this in After Effects that I’d seen, so I tried it. I think the light feeling to it and the flow made me connect the two, so I felt like it’d be a good tribute to my the little creatures. But I mean, I didn’t figure out how to control the colours for this effect and I couldn’t make it as big as I want it because it all crashed then haha so I kind of left it.

But I wasn’t giving up my jellyfish tribute just like that! Nah, I used my extensive Adobe-skills and thought “what the hell, I should be able to do this in Illustrator”. I have like 0.5 experience in Illustrator, but I googled “Illustrator tutorial abstract lines” or something like that and found a tutorial. Turns out it was really easy!!!!!!! (Here’s a link to the tutorial I used, it’s not perfect but it’s was enough to get me started!)

And here’s what I ended up with:

They look like some kind of ethereal underwater veils or something!!! Haha using the word veil just made me think of Sirius’ death and I got sad. 🙁 Anyway, I added some blurry particles in the “background” of these to add some kind of depth and also think I may have added some glow to the first two. Ya know, bioluminescence!!

In general I think I liked them more right after I made them though haha? 🙁 Feel a bit lame now. I might give them another week or so to stew before I decide if I like them or not!

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Monthly Makers is a challenge for anyone who wants to be more creative. During 2017 we’ll be launching twelve themes – one for every month – to inspire and challenge you. For February the theme is ANIMALS and Mikaela is hosting. Comment on her post here with a link to your creation before 28/4 to be a part of the compilation. More inspiration can be found over on Pinterest.

The people behind Monthly Makers 2017 are Alicia, Beatrice, Elsa, Emilia, Fredrika, Johanna, Julia, Mikaela, Ruth, Stina, Wilda and me. Be inspired, create and challenge yourself all through the year.

Follow us on Facebook to keep up with everything and be even more inspired. You can also follow us on Instagram, Pinterest, our website and in the inspirational group We Are Monthly Makers.