saramamy – Page 2 – Sara Marchetto

Illustrated dictionary for Éditions Anas

Hi everyone! After more than a year, I come up with a new project that I have worked on during the last months and that will be published by Éditions Anas. It is an illustrated Arabic-French dictionary aimed at kids around 8-12 years old. The book evolves around Bilal and Zeyneb, their family, and their daily lives. The characters already existed in previous books from the same publisher and just I re-designed them.
The stylistic choice of drawing all the characters and animals without a face was a set requirement. It was challenging in a good way to work within those boundaries and try to find visual interest and expressiveness relying on poses and body movements alone for all the characters.
The dictionary brings some light religious content. For me, it was very interesting to glance at a different cultural context (the book will be published in Saudi Arabia).

I worked on some book interior layout drafts that won’t be used, but I designed an almost completed cover. The final one should be very similar to this draft below.

I will upload some photos of the book when I receive some copies. Thanks for watching!

by saramamy

Learning Village: The Islands

Hi everyone,

I am collaborating again with the brilliant Caroline and Simon of Across Cultures (UK) in the creation of a new language learning program for students aged 7-13 years. This time, Across Cultures is working together with New Zealand's Ministry of Education!

Four different paths will take the learners on an exciting voyage among magical islands where they will meet rich landscapes, many cultures, and different people from around the world while learning a language, exercise their speech and writing abilities, and take assessments autonomously or in class, using a visual-based approach.

These below are some previews of the map, all designed in vectors: (the waves and many other objects will be animated later)

A few of the "friends" that the learners will meet on the voyage:

Some backgrounds and full-screen illustrations:

And a few sketches below:

thanks for watching! :)

Sara

by saramamy

Educational and entertaining book for griffin+row

Griffin+Row is an Australian company that produces high quality skincare products, containing ingredients of natural origin and native plants extracts.

In May last year, they contacted me in order to create a small coffee-table book with a light, fun tone, dozens of illustrations and a lot of info and curiosities about skin health, to support the commerce of their products. They wanted the book to be informative but fun, and created with a mix of contents and various styles of fun and educational illustrations.

For this project, I created a special layout in InDesign, working with a mix of scrap book style fonts, with a fresh hand drawn look. I also created a lot of vectors, hand drawn and digital illustrations that mix well, I think, together with the general style of the book, while adding information and vivacity. When the work was finished (the book is now being printed), I also created contents for the future social media promotion.

Following, some examples of the interior spread pages.

I am grateful to have been able to work with griffin+row again, because they always offer great feedback and useful comments, and give me a lot of artistic freedom while helping me to maintain visual consistence in a big project like this one.

I am really curious about how the book will turn out in a printed form.

Sara

by saramamy

Sleeping owl canvas painting

Ciao a tutti, riesumo questo blog dal suo lungo sonno e posto il mio ultimo dipinto, che sono finalmente riuscita a fare scansionare.

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Hi everyone! I resume this blog by its long sleeping status to post the scans and photos of my last painting.

Da tempo avevo in mente di dipingere un gufo addormentato in un bosco, perdendomi negli intricati dettagli del piumaggio mimetico. Un giorno sono stata colpita dall'atmosfera calda e soleggiata di una fotografia di un bosco di faggi, ed ho deciso di trarne l'ambientazione per il gufo nella mia testa. Ho dipinto una tela di dimensioni piuttosto grandi rispetto a ciò su cui lavoro di solito, cioè un 40 x 60 cm. E' molto bello lavorare su formati più grandi, ma per me più difficile, perchè tendo a perdermi troppo nei particolari, faticando a mantenere l'atmosfera che avevo in mente inizialmente. In questo caso, dopo molti ripensamenti e rimaneggiamenti, penso di avercela fatta. Volendo lavorare con sicurezza sulla tela, ho utilizzato i colori acrilici, che amo meno della tempera poichè non si può rilavorare il colore asciutto, ma sono più robusti e non richiedo incorniciatura.

Nei miei lavori futuri spero di riuscire a mantenere una maggiore freschezza, cioè di imparare pian piano a utilizzare meno passaggi e pennellate più decise, azzeccando subito il colore.

Qui sotto ho inserito alcuni dettagli, poi schizzi e prove della fase di progettazione.

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It's been a long time since I wanted to paint a sleeping owl, just to lose myself in the intricate details of its feathers. One day I was captured by the warm, sunny atmosphere of a photo of a beech forest, and I decided to use those colors and ambient for the owl in my head. I painted on a canvas of a size that is bigger than what I usually use (40 x 60 cm). Working on bigger support is nice, but for me, it was challenging because I naturally tend to focus too much on details (since I draw a lot of small pictures every day) and so I risk losing the general atmosphere from sight. This time, after a lot of rethinking and retouching, I think that I obtained the right tints and a sense of quiet.

Since I wanted to work safely on the canvas, this time I chose acrylics, which I don't love as much as gouache paint, but are more robust and suitable for a flexible material.

For my future work, I hope I'll be able to use fewer layers of paint and more bold brush strokes, finding the right colors sooner.

Below, you will see some details and work-in-progress pictures.