A test 

http://www.carolinadeluca.com/illustration

This is a small study for a larger illustration I'll be working on the next days (or weeks). But it went quite well :)

And yes, I don't usually do studies, but I draw on the spot. I'm too impatient for studies! And this was also on the spot, but as I was finishing it I realised I could turn it into that larger project I've been thinking on for the last weeks. Sometimes it is magical how conscious thinking crystallises into ideas without us realising, and then, once the pen is back in the hand, the ideas just flow.

What are dreams made of? What would your thoughts look like? Is your Univers fluid, regular, homogeneous, heterogeneous, chaotic?

A special colouring book

http://www.carolinadeluca.com/illustration

Back in Spring last year I worked on a project... Now, just this week, this project has been made public, and I can also share it with you! Because yes, there's sometimes a long time passing between the moment when I finish something and the moment when comes to light.

My part in all this was making a series of illustrations for a special colouring book for children, a book thought to encourage them to ask questions about the world, about its elements, about how matter is formed, about how and why things happen, and maybe, with luck, get few of them to continue asking themselves these questions in the future, as scientists, when they will be adults. 

The book is edited by the ATLAS experiment at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and they have posted a video here to present it: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jwkZ63eezY&feature=youtu.be

The whole idea of the book was to introduce the particles as ingredients using the analogy with a cooking recipe book. My work consisted of creating and illustrating the elementary particles we know the Universe is made from, in a way that young children will find them funny and engaging. Here's a taste of the elementary particles I drew:

The book is available here, for all children (and adults!). If yours are curious, or you are, and love colouring, maybe you can print it for them (or for you!): https://atlas.cern/colouring-book

Have fun colouring!

Poster for a Scientific Conference
2016 edition

http://www.carolinadeluca.com/event-posters

Last year I made a poster for a scientific conference that took place in Amsterdam, do you remember that poster? 
It was a conference about tracking detector mechanics, and I explained a bit about the idea behind the illustration and the poster design here. This year I was contacted again to make the poster for the 2016 edition of the conference, so this is what this entry is about!

These conferences usually take place every year, and usually they change venue every time. For this edition, the meeting will take place in the German city of Bonn. I have never been in Bonn so, before starting with the real work, it took me a bit of documenting myself to get a feeling of the place. And yes, behind every illustration, every poster, every graphical work, there's always some investigation involved.

I watched some documentaries, asked some friends, and did a small research about the the personality of the city, and about its emblematic points. When this was clear, I decided what I wanted to emphasize from all that, and I started drawing buildings, walls, skylines...

I drew various buildings, that I've just dropped together in this image above: the ancient city house, a piece of an ancient wall that is still standing, the ancient post office, the University, the Cathedral, and then a skyline. 

Bonn is also the place of birth of the great Beethoven, and so I drew him as well (but this will come later ;) ).

Then, I turned the city into a particle detector.

I decided what structure I wanted to give the poster, where the text should be, where the image would be, and so on. After that I drew the basic structure of the detector I wanted to build, and I cut the various buildings into pieces, using my computer, and deformed them to fill in the detector structure I had created, trying to build Bonn as realistically as possible.

Once this was done I started painting the various parts, using the real colours the buildings have, and sometimes tuning them a bit so they would be more outstanding, more contrasted, more balanced... 

When I had the broken Bonn ready, I drew the cables, the cable boxes, and the metallic structures that also conform a particle detector, and merged them with the rest of the city. When this was done, the detector was already built!

And now what I'd promised... a bit about Beethoven. Well, I invite you to look into the poster and see if you can find him. If you did find Wally when you were children, then you should be able to find Beethoven too!

Children's card design and illustration

www.carolinadeluca.com
https://www.facebook.com/imaginecarolinadeluca

Recently I came back to my pencil colors to draw illustrations for a card for a child's baptism. It was nice, after what it felt to me like a long time, to color things again with pencils. Painting takes much longer than with watercolors for example, as it is by mixing many soft layers of different colors, drawn with different inclinations, that I have the effects I desire. But it is very relaxing, and it surely does test my patience :) 

Usually I don't think about taking pictures while I work, but this time, as I wanted to show the progress to the person who ordered the card, I didn't forget of doing it, and I can show here the work progress. In this work, the drawing is simple, because is the colors who give the whole magic. Although of course having drawn the right theme is always important!

The card is to be squared, 14 x 14 cm, so I made the drawing proportionally, but a bit larger to gain resolution in small details.

First drawing for the front cover, ready to paint

Coloring progress. I started from the left bottom part until I finished all the mountains and trees. Then I did the sun and the sky. Finally, the sea in the middle, the stork, and the baby throwing up the stars in the sky.

Front cover drawing finished.

Detail of the drawing in the back cover, for which I followed the same process as with the front cover. But it was much faster! :)

Finished card. It folds in the middle, so that the main drawing is in the cover, and the small one in the back.

Picture of the finished card, courtesy of the client.

Publicity for a kindergarten

Publicité pour garde des enfants

Publicidad para jardín de infancia

www.carolinadeluca.com/flyers-and-brochures

Flyer and webpage header for a kindergarten. Not a kindergarten in the traditional sense, but a house kindergarten. This is something very stablished at least in France, where the "maman de jour" are recognised by law, but in Spain is just starting now, and hence, not very well known by many. The flyer is printed A6, two sides, one in Catalan and one in Spanish, both with the same design.

Brochure et bande en-tête pour le site à internet d'une maman de jour à Barcelonne. Les mamans de jour sont bien connues en France, mais en Espagne, il faut encore expliquer!
Le brochure est imprimé en taille A6, par deux côtés, un côté en espagnol et l'autre en catalan.

Folleto y cabecera de sitio web para una mamá de día, es decir, un "jardín de infancia en casa". El folleto se imprime en A6, por las dos caras, una en español y la otra en catalán.

Flyer for a house kindergarten. Printed A6, double side, one Catalan, one Spanish.

The same design is adapted for the site's header. If you look at their pictures, you will see why there's an hammock in the design.

Le même dessin est adapté pour la bande en-tête du site à internet. Si vous voyez leurs photos, vous comprendriez pour quoi ils sont tous à l'hamac.

El mismo diseño adaptado para la cabecera de su página web. Si echáis un vistazo a las fotos, comprenderéis por qué hay una hamaca.

Website header.

Poster for a scientific conference

www.carolinadeluca.com

This is one of the jobs I've been lately doing and that now is public in 
http://forum2015.nikhef.nl, a poster for a conference on mechanics engineering on particle tracking detectors, called simply "trackers" in scientific jargon. 


Behind every poster, design or illustration there is always some research, and a lot of thinking and brainstorming with yourself. 
What is that image that you are looking for that will represent the whole idea in an attractive way? 

Sometimes ideas come easier than others, it depends a lot on the topic and in your experience. If you are familiar with it, it may help, if the topic is very popular it can be trickier to find something original. In this case, I can say my previous life as a physicist helped quite a bit.

This was my first drawing for this poster:

Do you see what it is? 

Clue: How is the design related with the conference topic and place?

Can you guess where the conference is taking place? 

Why are these buildings placed in a circle? 

Why are there bridges? 

What is this circle divided like a cheese in the middle?

There is nothing random in the design, and every element has a reason to be there:


First thing to think about: what is a tracker? How does it look like?

Trackers are designed by physicists and engineers. Usually, the former think about what is needed in terms of the physics they want to measure, while the latter design and maintain services that are essential for the experiment.

Trackers can have different geometries depending on the physics targeted by the experiment, but in general, if one is interested in collecting as much information as possible, they are cylindrical to cover all possible physical space (see here). They are usually immersed in a magnetic field, and measure properties of charged particles. And they are called "trackers" because charged particles do actually leave tracks on them.


Second thing to think about: what is different about this conference edition?

Scientific conferences have usually many editions that take place once in a year, or once in every two years, depending on the conference. Normally, each edition is organised by a different scientific institution, and so it changes venue every time. 


Can you answer now all the questions above?

In this poster, I have used a very distinctive and recognisable feature of the conference location, Amsterdam. Its beautiful buildings and canals are known and admired by everyone (counting myself in!). 
I painted some typical houses in a circle, emulating a frontal view of a tracker detector, made the "cheese" to mark the geometrical center of the detector where the tracks of the particles come from, and placed the bridges in the front to relate the city architecture and canals with the water of the Amsterdam canals, which actually represent the tracks of the outgoing particles. 

Indeed during this conference Amsterdam will become the center of tracking detector mechanics, won't it?

Posters that become T-Shirts

Posters qui deviennent T-Shirts

Posters que se convierten en camisetas

T-Shirt from a design that I originally made as a contribution to the 2014 PosterForTomorrow poster competition to defend the right to work and the right to work right (poster entry here).

Think about it, what would it mean for you losing your job? Or without thinking about the most dramatic cases, what would it mean for you losing your enthusiasm about it? 

What is there behind the drawing in your T-shirt?

I recently made a personalised t-shirt, for someone who loves fishing. He told me he wanted a fish, and the fish he wanted, a gilt-head bream fish. We discussed a bit his ideas, and agreed on a basis for the design style, which for an optimal result would also drive the color of the t-shirt. In this entry I will show the whole process, and the final result which I am very happy about.

The gilt-head bream fish is one of the most tasty Mediterranian fishes. In latin, its name is Sparus aurata, where "aurata" refers to the golden bar between its eyes. Ok, this is all I know about it, besides that it is indeed very good! Wikipedia will probably tell you more, so I will talk about the design part.

The idea for the T-shirt was that the details and the characteristics of the fish were visible, and at the same time, that the design was simple enough to be easily printable. 

The first step is of course to draw it, for which I used ink, as it allows to draw details using clean and simple traits, and it is easily transferrable to the computer.

Hand-drawn gilt-head bream fish

The second step is to make it printable in a T-shirt, and create the whole design. An idea that came when working on it: actually one could draw the fish in the front, and the bones in the back of the T-shirt, so when people sees you coming sees the whole fish, but when they see you going away they only see the bones, the head and the tail, as if you'd eaten it. So I went back to the drawing board and drew the bones.

Hand-drawn bones

Then I scanned everything and started the design process. What happens when you scan something? You have pixels, the white background of the paper, or the white background of the scan machine itself. But you do not want the white square of your paper or your scanner to appear in your T-shirt, so some treatment is required before printing. In this case, I chose to vectorise the image, to be able to work on its elements separately. This is an option you don't always have, and has to be done with care, but here it worked out quite nicely. So I removed the background, and I worked on the image to remove some of the white filling in the fish body and fins to give them an "unfinished" appearance that would suit for a T-shirt, and at the same time, highlight the fish head and tail. While preparing the image, I added a black background to easily see all of its elements, and make sure no unwanted white areas from the paper background remained.

Front side fish as it will go in the T-shirt 

For the back side I followed a similar process. When all background was gone I merged it with the head and the tail from the front side, to give the fish the appearance it would have after it has been eaten.

Back side fish as it will go in the T-shirt

The final images must be background free, and the only additional color will be given by the T-shirt color. In this case, the person who ordered it wanted it in black... and here is the final result! 

                             

T-shirt in black, front side

 

T-shirt in black,  back side

There are many ways of designing T-shirts, most of the times one starts directly with the computer with vector images and the process becomes different. It also depends on the clothing one wants to use, and of course (and very importantly), on the final printing process. But this would be another entry...

Music Posters

A couple of posters I recently made to advertise two upcoming events in Thoiry. The first poster is to announce a concert, the second one to announce a Masterclass. The two posters have a total different finality and hence they have been conceived with very different styles. 

Poster Concert Echo du Reculet Fev. 2015

The design of a poster for a concert will of course depend on the nature of the concert itself. In this case, the music will be quite varied, so the poster does not evoque a specific style. The poster features most of the elements of the harmony who will play the 1st part, as well as the four flutists that will play the 2nd part, displayed in the circle that drives the whole design. The background color is black, and it is the magenta featuring the music floating in the background (in the atmosphere) which gives some warmth to the design (does music warm us up in a winter day? I'd say yes!). 

Poster MasterClass for flutes Fev. 2015

This poster belongs to the Masterclass series initiated already last year (see this entry), and so it keeps a similar style, with some specific changes for the occasion. Aside from the picture featuring the new musicians, colors are warmer, and the background displays a landscape made of staves, so that the lights and shadows from the musicians picture seem to come from the drawing behind, don't they?

Social posters

A social poster is one with a social message. Through images, social posters can be used to denounce injustice, something abusive, or to celebrate some achievement. The final goal is to make people think about something in particular, and if possible, react about it.

One of the most critical things in our society now is the lack of job for many individuals. Lots of people loose their jobs for a very long time, starting a chain that ends up with the collapse of their lives and themselves. Someone loses his job, then cannot pay the bills, cannot pay the house, cannot pay his food, and eventually becomes alienated from the society, and from himself. Others have jobs that are very little rewarded, and also collapse, in a different way. So our job is that foot that we cannot loose, like in the image below.

See it in http://www.posterfortomorrow.org/en/gallery/view/38113

Cartes de Voeux

Greeting Cards, Tarjetas de Felicitación

Dessin de cartes de voeux, pour ce Noël, anniversaires ou tout autre événement que vous vous imaginez! Souhaitant plein de musique pour la nouvelle année! Vendues en France cette saison par l'Echo du Reculet. Elles seront vendues comme affiches (sur demande) pendant le Marché de Noel de Thoiry le 7 décembre.

Designing greeting cards, for this Christmas, birthdays, or any other reason you can imagine! Wishing lots of music for this new year! Being sold in France this season by the Echo du Reculet. They will also be sold as poster (by request) in the Christmas Market in Thoiry December 7th.

Diseño de tarjetas de felicitación, para estas Navidades, cumpleaños, o cualquier otro motivo que os podáis imaginar! Deseando mucha música para el próximo año! Vendidas en Francia esta temporada por l'Echo du Reculet. También vendidos en formato póster (bajo encargo) en el Mercado de Navidad de Thoiry el 7 de diciembre.

Cats on the roofs

Clarinettist 

Let's go party together!

Magie

Do you want to dance?

Pour en savoir un peu plus sur déroulement des travaux:

Je mets à continuation une photo de moi avec les dessins originaux. Le travail progresse toujours de la même façon: je commence avec des dessins faites à main. Le trait est toujours propre et claire. Après habituellement je scanne les images. Dependant de l'usage je procède a mettre du couleur à l'image tout de suite, avec des varietés de techniques qui vont du crayon ou marqueurs, au acryliques. Dans ce cas, normalement l'usage est bien determiné et on ne prévoit pas des grands enlargements, par example, pour faire des affiches etc. De fois on veut que l'image est bien versatile, alors je vectorise le dessin original et mets du couleur avec l'ordinateur, o bien à main pour re-vectoriser après. 

Voilà le processus! Il est toujours composé d'une grande variété d'étapes, qui dependent beaucoup de la destination final du travail!

In my studio, with the original drawings (image credit: Fabienne Cléard)

To know a bit more about the work progress:

The picture above shows me in my studio, with the original drawings I made for these cards. Usually, work progresses in the same way. I start with a drawing, always made by hand, with trace always clean and clear. After that I normally scan the images. Depending on the final use of the work I immediately proceed to color the images, with a variety of techniques that range from the use of pencil colors, markers, to acrylic paints. In this case the final destination of the artwork is well defined, and it is not expected that enlargements of the images will be needed, for example, to make posters. There are times however when we want that the images are very versatile, and allow their adaptation to a large variety of uses. Then I vectorise the original drawing with the computer, and paint it with the computer. Or I paint it by hand to vectorise it again afterwards.

So this is the process! It is always composed of many different stages, that depend a lot of the final destination of the artwork!

Dormir bajo un árbol

Sleep under a tree

Dormir sous un arbre

Entre proyecto y proyecto, estuve pintando un árbol en la pared. Alguien va a dormir siempre, desde esta noche, bajo un árbol!

Between project and project, I've been painting a tree in the wall, for someone will always sleep, from now on, under a tree!

Pendant le temps entre projet et projet, j'ai peint un arbre sûr le mur. Il y a quelqu'un qui va toujours dormir sous un arbre!

Os dejo algunas fotos que ilustran cómo fue progresando el trabajo.
Some pictures below illustrate the work progress
Voilà quelques photos pour illustrer le processus 

Tree drawn in the wall

Day 1: First layer of leaves

Day 1: First layer in the trunk

Day 2: Second layer of leaves

Day 2: Second layer in the trunk

Day 3: Third layer of leaves

Day 3: Third layer in the trunk

Day 4: Fourth layer of leaves and finish tree!

Imprimiendo camisetas!

Printing T-shirts!

When it comes to images, there are endless possibilities. You can choose to hang them in your wall, or you can choose to wear them!
If you want one, contact me!

 Higgs T-shirt 

Flamingos T-shirt 

Momento para celebrar: mi vida, mi opción, mi decisión

Time to celebrate: My life, my choice, my decision 

Por el derecho de las mujeres a decidir libremente su maternidad. El aborto no es una opción deseable pero sí el derecho inalienable de las mujeres de decidir por cuenta propia de su cuerpo y sus circunstancias. Por un aborto libre y con garantías.

To defend women’s right to decide about their maternity. Abortion is not something desirable, but is the inalienable right that every woman has to decide by herself about her body and her circumstances. For a right to abort with freedom and with all guarantees.

Compromiso

Engagement

Cubierta tarjeta felicitación matrimonio

Cover page for a marriage card

   Foto de la tarjeta montada

   Picture of finished card

Voilà el Bosón de Higgs

Voilà The Higgs Boson

El superhéroe más famoso del LHC...

The most famous LHC superhero...

El villano más villano...

The most villain of all...

Poniéndole cara a la materia oscura: Professor Dark Matter
Giving a face to Dark Matter: Professor Dark Matter