Hello there! Welcome to my new blog, my name is Melissa Russell, also known as Mel and Melon.R on Instagram! I am currently studying in my third and final year of Illustration, looking forward to graduating with an Honours degree next year.
I chose to do this course as I already enjoyed creating illustrations but wanted to develop my knowledge of the industry, learning how I could transform my hobby into a career, and I also wanted to learn new skills and refine my work/style to a professional standard.
In terms of career, my goal is to become a freelance illustrator, working with multiple clients, but also running my own shop, in which I can sell products such as prints, tote bags, clothing, and so on.
I believe my inspiration can come from a lot of things, such as movies, books, pop-culture, mythology, colours, etc. Recently, I have fallen in love with Wes Andersen movies, the colour schemes mixed with the composition of the characters, props and scenery, have been set out so beautifully, that the films are art in their own right. Another useful source for inspiration that I commonly use during projects, would be Pinterest. As well as finding new artists, styles and stories, I also find photos of people, which have often influenced my characters. I have created a board of ‘Model inspirations’ in which I save photos of beautiful and unique looking people, which I often look through at a later dates, and have helped give me inspiration for a lot of projects in the past, whether it be story-wise, with colour schemes or helped me form overall characters.
In previous years I have mostly worked digitally, however, I have wanted to slowly get back into working with traditional mediums. So in my current process, I have started taking traditional elements, such as linework and painted textures, into photoshop where I will then colour the illustrations digitally. This to me is the perfect balance of traditional mediums and digital techniques, I am happy with the process at this moment in time but would enjoy exploring more ways in which I could further improve the method more.
My personal goals for this year is to not let stress get the better of me and to keep on track with my project work. Over the holidays, I discovered a good stress reliever for me, has been when I went to the gym for 1-2 hours three times per week. It helped me get out of the house, away from stresses at home, and out of my own head, at least for a couple of hours. Once I have gotten back into the routine and schedule of college, I do want to start going back to the gym, maybe on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, and possibly Thursdays after my lessons. Other than improvements in my basic health, I feel it will also help improve on my mental health as well, as I just feel it would give me a good break during the week, it gives me time to stop overthinking about work, almost resetting my mindset, then I’d feel re-energised to get back on with the projects as soon as I got home.
My more career-based goals/overall goals for this year is to become more of a well-rounded illustrator, covering more areas of the illustration industry, creating work that I might have hidden from in the past, and also getting the bases of my shop/website created, so that when I do leave college, I will hopefully have a career doing what I love, whether as a freelance illustrator, self-employed and selling my work online, or a good mixture of both.
I will be posting at least once per week on this blog, if not more, however, if you want to find me on other social media platforms, you can find me at:
Melon.R 