Category Archives: Featured Projects

Spring Fling 2013

jonathan-woodward-studio-spring-fling-cover

In October last year, I was contacted by designer Tim Bremner on behalf of Spring Fling, Scotland’s Premier Arts and Crafts Open Studios Event, to Illustrate the wrap-around cover for their 2013 event brochure.

I explored a couple of different directions, but in the end we went with grasshoppers in different colours so they could be used as a branding device to denote the different routes on the open studio tour.

grasshopper animal rough

grasshopper rough

Once the composition and Photoshop colour rough had been approved, I moved straight on to final artwork and began collaging the grass…

spring-fling-grass

…before individually collaging each of the grasshoppers.

yellow-grasshopperflying-grasshopperbrown-grasshopper

All of the grasshoppers and the grass were then pulled together in Photoshop, where subtle shadows were added beneath each of the grasshoppers to ground them in the scene.

Spring Fling 2013 Book Cover

SPRING-FLING-2013-final-crop2

SPRING-FLING-2013-final-crop1

The Illustrations were also used on both the guide map and in the Spring Fling app too.

jonathan-woodward-studio-spring-fling-map

jonathan-woodward-studio-spring-fling-app

The whole project was really fun to work on, with great clients and art direction throughout. Special thanks to designer Tim Bremner and Spring Fling project manager Leah Black.

Here’s what designer Tim had to say about my involvement in the project:

I worked with Jonathan recently for the first time on the brochure cover of the Spring Fling Arts Festival. Having made contact with Jonathan my first impressions were that he was very friendly, enthusiastic and pro-active right from the start.

Once we had agreed on which direction to take, everything went very smoothly and he went straight to final artwork without any further changes.

Jonathan fulfilled the brief perfectly and the client was very happy.

Featured Project: The World Association Of Zoos & Aquariums Commemorative Poster

I was recently commissioned by the World Association of Zoos & Aquariums to Illustrate a commemorative poster to help celebrate their 77th Anniversary.

Other than receiving a list of species to include (some lovely ones I’d not collaged before so I knew it was going to be a fun project), I was given full creative freedom to create the design. After scribbling down a few initial ideas, I decided to make the ’77′ out of trees and then have the creatures interacting with it.

Below is the initial scribble of a sketch and a neater version with rough Photoshop colours that I submitted for approval.

Once approved, it was time to move on to the final cut paper collages – here are a few work in progress pics…

The main body of each of the Illustrations were created using a traditional cut paper collage technique with a few final details being added digitally afterwards (mainly details that would be too fiddly or time consuming to do digitally as I was on a deadline for the work).

Below is an example of one of the collages before and after the digital details were added. This crocodile was probably the one that was enhanced digitally the most, as I ran out of the magazine clipping textures I needed for the tail detail.

Below is a selection of some of the other final creature Illustrations.

And finally, here are the final Illustrated posters (portrait and landscape formats) along with a cover graphic for the WAZA Facebook page.

…and the WAZA Facebook cover graphic

This has probably been my favourite job to date, not only getting to collage a number of my favourite creatures, but working for a great client that does great work for conservation around the world.

The exciting thing from a marketing point of view is that WAZA will be using this image throughout the rest of the year while celebrating their 77th Anniversary (including at their annual conference in Melbourne, Australia later in the year) – which means my name and contact details and a copy the poster will be going out to 300+ top zoos around the world (couldn’t wish for better exposure to my target market than that :) .

“Jonathan designed a stunning illustration to celebrate WAZA’s 77th Anniversary. He worked very hard and very quickly to design a beautiful image that has exceeded our expectations.

This illustration followed us during months, as a beautiful poster but also as a design for our website and a cover for our newsletter.

WAZA was honoured to have this beautiful illustration and is very grateful to Jonathan.

We really hope that we can work together again in the near future!”

Carole Lecointre – World Association of Zoos & Aquariums

I also have prints of the WAZA posters for sale in my Society6 print shop, with 50% of all profits going to WAZA.

Next on the drawing board is my very first children’s pop-up picture book for Quarto Children’s Books. The contract has been signed and page roughs are already in progress. I won’t be able to show any of that finished work for a while, but watch out for a few sneaky snippets here and there on the blog and a new feature project when I’m able to show the final book.