Hello there!
You are receiving my very first newsletter. I decided to launch it at the beginning of the year since it's usually time to organize the ideas and the projects are anxious to come out of the drawer.
This newsletter for me is also a writing exercise. In October last year, I started working with a literary agency and one of my new year's resolutions is to write and illustrate my own children's book.
So, it's time to practice!
What you will find here in this first post:
a little bit of the ups and downs of 2022
what am I doing at the moment
a step-by-step of my last illustration
let's talk about Guillermo del Toro!
2022, what a year!
I can say that 2022 was a tough year for me professionally. I spent most of the year looking for a new literary agency after a few months of being represented by another agency that didn't work as I would have liked. The whole process of signing representation with that first agency, feeling that it wasn't working, deciding to leave the agency, reconfiguring my entire portfolio, and starting a new search for a more suitable agency ended up consuming me a lot.
I know this topic of agencies and artists' representation is something that deserves a dedicated post, so to sum up, I can say that I arrived in July 2022 feeling extremely exhausted and unmotivated. That's when I finally got an answer from one of the agencies that interested me the most and with great joy I received an offer of representation from them!
As soon as that phase passed, I felt that my year could finally begin and that's when I illustrated the book Criança de Estimação for Editora Letra A and managed to finish the illustrations for the book Bandolins by my dear friend and author Luciana Albrecht.
Thankfully, we started 2023 with many plans and ambitions. Today I start an 8-week course on visual development for animation with the incredible Zac Retz and in a future post I intend to share what I will produce in these 8 weeks (hopefully a lot!).
And next March I will be attending the Bologna Children’s Book Fair with some talented illustrator friends. Cheers to Carolina Coroa and Clara Reschke!
For that, I am preparing new promotional material to distribute during the fair. Taking this opportunity, here's a step-by-step of the illustration I created for this material:
I wanted a circus-themed illustration, with several animals huddled together trying to balance while performing. I always collect references and build mood boards using PureRef:
Then sketch and color test:
Colored scene:
Scene with animals:
Final image with color correction:
And some details:
I also want to share 3 works of artists that I admire a lot and are related to this subject:
Finally, I couldn't help but share the artbook of the wonderful Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro. Netflix has made the interactive digital book available and it is a work that every animation lover should appreciate. I'm a big fan of del Toro's work and this film was no different: a first-class work of art with a precious aesthetic. No spoilers for now, but go watch it!!
Well, my intention here is to be succinct and learn the difficult art of synthesizing ideas, so that's it for now. Thank you for following my work and for taking the time to read this newsletter.
Cheers!
Thais
Love’t!!!! Congrats Thaís! It really nice gear about your processional achivements and creation! Thanks for share!
I LOVE that the version on your page has a beige background like your brand identity! Thanks for sharing your precious process and happy new year!