You are safe now! (New header illustration made by Djuro) February 27, 2010

You’ve noticed something new here? O’yes it’s a header illustration made by my dear friend Djurdjica Selec also know as Djuro. She’s amazing and really nice person, I usually call her a ninja because she kicks ass in drawing stuff. As freelance web designer and illustrator she works with the clients around the world. Djurdjica recently moved to the coast and still can’t believe it.

She’s currently working on improving her drawing skills, her design eye, reorganizing both her online and physical studio, preparing fish and going to bed no later than 5am. I’ve spent a few great weekends with her and had so much fun. For Christmas Djuro bought me a book called “Sexy Web Design”, by Elliot Jay Stocks which is still on my *Read me* list. She sometimes tweets about these things. And sometimes, when things consume her enough, she will draw them and put them on her blog.

To realize what she meant with the illustration I asked her a few questions:

The illustration you’ve done is not far away from the blog concept, and that’s why I like it very much. How did you come to the idea?

Well, since our initial Skype musings on Die Without Art blog, we both loved the idea of the illustration to literally represent that title. Your only wishes were to make it black and white, with a dash of red. So that was perfect, because we both wanted it bloody :).

Later I spent (how much?) two – three weeks, just letting my sick and bizarre part of mind do its work. At first I was getting all sorts of suicide – scene ideas, but soon I threw those out and just wallowed in ironic and more “bad luck” ones. And those came suprisingly easy.

This idea came to me while I was in the exact position our guy there is – the living one. I was drawing, with my iPod on and thinking “Okay, so I am indulging in some form of art, so I am safe now, but what if I weren’t?” and BAM! A piano falls right next to me! Well not really, but piano is the quintessential thing to be falling from the sky, killing random non art – loving people. The dog came to the picture later, as I felt bad for killing the poor guy, so hey, why not give him someone to fire the alarm?

It is a very self-explanatory idea and I liked that, header – wise.

I’m sure readers wanna know how you draw it?

I like to have a photo reference when drawing people, so after an unsuccessful web search for the exact poses I imagined, I turned to my only model available at midnight – my boyfriend, and made him pose for both our guys. I must say he was very cooperative, even stayed in the “you were just crashed by a piano” pose longer than needed. The piano was easy to find. So that was the sketch.

After realizing I sketched a way too vertical composition for a header, I traced it on a another paper. Actually two papers, glued together (you can notice the seam on the piano). I traced it with a pencil, and then traced it again with a thin black pen. I used Staedtler Tripulus Fineliner. Originally I planned on on coloring it in Photoshop, but I got carried away with the fineliner, and did the shadowing with hand. I also used a red fineliner and a grey Faber-Castell crayon. And lots of eraser!

I know you’re attending a drawing course, can we expect new works, soon?

Well if I do wish to exhibit something soon, it will surely go up on my blog. I’m trying to keep myself in a learning-mode as much as possible, and the drawing course is extremely valuable for that. Most of my work now is school-work. I sometimes publish that work on Twitter, while the initial “I made a drawing!” enthusiasm is still with me. To publish something purposefully, I need a backstory, an idea, a blog post, or a fun project such as DwA here :)

Thank you Djuro!

You’re following Djuro already?

Djuro is one of DwA’s friends with creative brains, read her blog at drawingdjuro.com. Hope she will publish new stuff more often. There you can find her drawings and sweet words. For short updates please follow her on Twitter.

Wallpaper alert!

You like the illustration ninja Djuro made? You can have it on your desktop. Just choose the resolution 1280×1024, 1680×1050 or 2560×1600 pixels and enjoy it every time you minimize your windows.

DwA logo is on the way. Stay tuned. Thanks for reading.