My Own Reference Photos:
Sketchbook Pages:
Reflection:
I really enjoyed this exercise because it gave me the opportunity to bring several of my favourite things together in one piece. In this course I've really enjoyed observational drawing of plants and a lot of my personal work is nature based and so this was a great starting point for this project. I ruled out making a zine about my characters or a story at this stage because I felt a stronger desire to follow the gardening theme and knew I wanted to make this zine as something that I could develop into something tangible for my online shop in the future. My greeting cards and paintings all follow the nature theme so this would fit in perfectly and would be a new type of product to go alongside the rest.
As you can see from my sketchbook pages I decided to go with a zine about what plants to have in your garden for a cottage garden look. My audience are 20 somethings who are learning to garden and want some simple tips on what types of plants to use and any special tips about each plant.
I chose to make the zine out of one sheet of A4 paper, cut and folded, using the tutorial above. I've not made a zine before and didn't want too many pages to fill so this size seemed ideal. Having it in a handy pocket size, it's a quick read which makes learning about cottage garden plants easy and fun.
Since this was a mini zine I was limited for space for text so I kept it really simple. I included plants that flower during the Summer and that create a variety of heights, textures and colours. I also wanted to include a little bit about pruning to get the best out of your plants and how to tell the difference between when Dahlia's are budding versus finishing.
I mulled over what kind of look I wanted for the pages for quite a while. I wasn't sure whether to go for a traditional watercolour and ink or keep it black and white or a bolder colour scheme. My style is very colourful and pastel and I love the impressionist style for detail, so I decided to keep true to that and also felt that with it being colourful and eye catching that would appeal to the younger audience. I loved the idea of the retro seed packet illustrations and I found a few for inspiration for my own pages. I think this look works well with my voice and also fits with the theme of the zine. Initially I was going to paint onto paper and then scan it but I didn't feel like it would result in the overall finish I wanted. I've been experimenting with a gouache brush pack on Procreate and decided to play with that more and use it for this project. I really like the textures you can get with it and layer up the colours using the different shaped digital brushes and washes.
For the title I ended up choosing 'What to Grow in Your Cottage Garden'. I tried out several different titles as shown in my sketchbook pages. I felt like this title got to the point the best, wasn't too wordy and shows that it's an informational zine rather than just pretty pictures. I think it fits the target audience well, it's specific to the type of garden it's aimed at and most cottage garden plants flower during the Summer month's and it's the time when we are all outside the most, so I didn't feel like I needed to add the word Sumer into the title but maybe I could add it as a sub title. Other changes I could do is add more about each plant and the conditions they need and when they begin to flower. I wouldn't want to cover too much in this mini zine though as I want to keep the premise of it being a quick little pocket guide to help you know what to grab at the garden centre to create the cottage garden look.
My finished zine came out quite well, it's the first time I've tried making one before and I really enjoyed it. This zine is something I would like to develop further and actually make it into a polished, finished zine to sell in my online shop next year. I think with some tweaking I can make this even better and it would be a useful little guide for someone new to gardening who wants a cottage garden look. All the plants I chose are ones I've grown myself and enjoy in my own garden, it was lovely to use my experience and knowledge of plants to put into this little zine and hopefully help others to create a garden they love too.
References:
Telling Tales. 2022. How to fold a zine. [online] Available at: <https://tellingcambridgetales.wordpress.com/2016/04/01/how-to-fold-a-zine/> [Accessed 10 August 2022].
BBC Gardeners World Magazine. 2022. 12 key plants for a cottage garden. [online] Available at: <https://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/plants-for-a-cottage-garden/> [Accessed 10 August 2022].
Rhs.org.uk. 2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.rhs.org.uk/garden-design/design-with-plants/cottage-garden-plants> [Accessed 10 August 2022].
Aesthetics Wiki. 2022. Lo-Fi. [online] Available at: <https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Lo-Fi> [Accessed 1 October 2022].
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