Doctor Who celebrates its 60th anniversary next month. I collected some quotes from the Doctor in a zine…with random hipster photos. 🤭 Saturated colors, vintage objects, and a soft tone—this style of photo was all over the internet in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
“Work in Progress” includes process photos and notes about how I made some of my zines. Not tutorials. More like DVD commentary, but for zines.
I designed this in Canva and printed it through Mixam. (Not an ad, haha. I like sharing how I make stuff. Hence, this zine.)
“Modern-day Sisyphus” is a mini zine about 21st century tasks that never go away.
The zine is inspired by Sisyphus, a figure from Greek mythology who is tasked with rolling a boulder up a mountain, only for the boulder to roll back down every time he reached near the top.
Copies are available on Etsy.
Page 1 has a summary of the story of Sisyphus.
Page 2 lists chores that are repetitive: washing dishes, doing laundry, dusting, and vacuuming. At the bottom of page 2, there’s an illustration of a man rolling a boulder up a hill.
Pages 3 and 4 list tasks that are repetitive: making the bed, replying to emails, mowing the lawn, taking out trash, and paying bills. At the bottom of the pages, there’s an illustration of a man rolling a boulder up a hill.
Pages 5 and 6 list positive things that are repetitive: listening to favorite songs, making a cup of coffee, saying good night to loved ones, cooking favorite meals, celebrating holidays, and spending time on hobbies. At the bottom of the pages, there’s an illustration of a man rolling a boulder up a hill.
Here’s the back cover:
I watched Elemental without knowing what to expect, because Disney’s marketing missed the mark (again). But I liked the movie overall. One of my favorite parts was seeing how each character used their element, like Ember inflating a hot air balloon.
I wanted to draw the scene with the hot air balloon floating over the city. I started with a pencil sketch. It’s rough. I wanted to figure out the foreground vs. the background and where the balloon was in the sky, in relation to the skyline.
Here’s a photo of when I was painting the larger areas. I simplified colors and composition (all those buildings!) because it’s so much detail.
Here’s the finished drawing.
“Song lyrics I mishear” is a mini zine that lists lyrics where I hear the wrong words. Each page is about one song and includes the actual lyrics along with what I hear instead.
I wanted the interior pages to be a mix of typed text (the actual song lyrics) and handwritten notes (the words I hear). This way, the pages look like they’re annotated.
Copies are available on Etsy.
I made tutorials that show how to set up a design file in Canva to make an 8-page mini zine. The tutorials go over how to set up guides and what the page order will be. Everything in the tutorials is done with the free version of Canva.
There’s a video version you can watch on YouTube.
And a PDF version you can download for free (or pay what you want).
Here are a few preview pages from the PDF.
If you have any questions or feedback on these tutorials, please send me a message.
I’ve been particularly annoyed lately about how much we depend on cars, so I made a little zine about it. I’m not saying we should eliminate cars completely. I want better public transportation so everyone has more and better options for getting around.
“An Incomplete History of Zany Brainy” is a 20-page zine about a U.S. retail chain from the 1990s. These stores focused on affordable, educational toys for children.
The zine includes background on Zany Brainy, my favorite toys from the store, and what happened to Zany Brainy after the company declared bankruptcy in 2001.
Copies are available on Etsy.
I also made a digital version that is available on Ko-fi (free or pay what you want). You can download the zine as a PDF to read on your favorite screen. Note: This is not formatted for printing and folding a paper copy.
I had a lot of fun collecting info and reminiscing about Zany Brainy while I made this zine. I hope you enjoy reading it!
“Playground games in the 1990s” is a pros and cons list of recess activities that were popular in elementary school. (At least in central Pennsylvania, in the 1990s.)
Each page includes small illustrations relating to playground activities. I drew on Whitelines paper so I could draw with a regular pen and then photograph the paper to use the drawings digitally.
Here’s an illustration of Bruce Wayne’s mansion (Wayne Manor). I really like how the blue highlights contrast against the black on the building and the trees.
Here’s the pencil sketch I started with.
Here’s an illustration of Bluth’s Original Frozen Banana Stand from Arrested Development.
I started with a pencil sketch to draw the outline of each building.
“Movies I never want to see again” is about movies I watched one time and do not want to watch again. This doesn’t mean they’re bad movies! But something about them makes me feel like once is enough.
I drafted this zine by hand and then I made it in Canva. The popcorn bucket on the front cover is modified from Terrance Barksdale’s photo on Pexels.
Here’s an illustration of the Metropolis skyline at night.
I started with a pencil sketch to outline each building.
I started painting by covering the large areas first: slate gray for the sky, black for some buildings, and gray for some buildings.
Then I added in all the details.
Here’s an illustration inspired by a scene in Back to the Future: Marty walking into Hill Valley.
I made this as part of a course on illustrating with Posca pens. The assignment was to use two shades of the same color as the main colors in the piece. Since a lot of this image is grassy fields, I chose two shades of green. I kept Marty’s outfit realistic (orange vest and blue jeans) to signify that he’s out of place…or, more accurately, out of time.
Here are some thumbnail sketches I did prior to painting the scene. I wanted to test out colors–what looked good for the grass and Marty’s outfit.
And here’s the simple pencil sketch I started with.
I took an online course on illustrating with Posca pens taught by James Chapman. He has posted lots of his sketchbook pages to his Instagram.
I had a couple Posca pens for a few years, but I hadn’t done much with them. I saw this course and thought it would be a great way to practice with Posca pens.
The course covers how to create a pencil sketch to get the composition down. Then it explores various color schemes to determine how to color the illustration. I especially like the challenge of limiting the number of colors used.
I like the process I learned in this course. It takes me several hours to finish an illustration, but I really enjoy the time I’m spending learning and practicing. I’ll share my illustrations here as I finish them.
The course encourages choosing a theme that will motivate you to keep working on sketches. I chose places in movies, TV shows, and books. First up is The Candy Bar from Jimmy Neutron.
Here’s the pencil sketch:
I chose to go with realistic colors, so I used Posca pen colors that are close to what this location looks like in the show.
Here’s a progress photo, with the larger areas of color done:
And here’s the finished illustration:
I really enjoyed making this as my first attempt at a Posca pen illustration!
“My 20-minute rule for movies” is about how I don’t feel guilty when I stop a movie I don’t enjoy. I give any movie a fair chance, but I’m okay turning it off if it’s not for me.
I made this zine in Canva. It’s 12 pages, printed in black and gray scale on orange paper.
“How to Deal with Small Talk” is a collection of tips for how to handle small talk conversations.
Maybe you’re like me and small talk drags you down. And maybe, like me, you have to put up with it anyway. Hopefully this zine can help.
This zine is printed in full color. I made the background pages using blue, purple, and red inks. Some pages have digital illustrations. All the text is typed.
It might be difficult to tell from the photos, but I tried a new page size for this zine, and I like it! A 12-page zine, printed double-sided on one 8.5x11-inch sheet of paper. The finished zine is about 3.5 inches high x 4 inches wide and bound with staples. And these dreamy cotton candy colors are on every page.
Glorious.
The Philly Zine Fest is accepting submissions for their Anthology zine. I made a collage with a bit of text I’ve been waiting to use somewhere.
The background is photocopied aluminum foil (for real!). I simply cut a piece of aluminum foil and made a copy of it. Then I crinkled the aluminum foil a bit and made another copy. That became the background for this page.
The woman’s face and hands are stock photos taken by Ospan Ali, available on Unsplash. The text is something I wrote a while ago and hadn’t found a place for…until now. 😉
This collage is a very different style for me, and I really like how it came out! The great thing about submitting to zines is that there’s room to experiment. It feels like low stakes, since it’s only one page.
I contributed a page to Webs Across the Campfire, vol. 2, a special Halloween zine from Vlasinda Productions. Copies are available in their shop.
For my page, I wanted to make a collage. I had paper from my ink color experiments to work with. I cut these into shapes for clouds, a moon, and pumpkins.
For the spider webs, I drew on black cardstock with a white gel pen. Then I photocopied the webbing, so I had sections to work with.
Here’s the finished page, with text I printed and glued on, a clip art house I modified, and black cardstock for the hill.
When I worked on my zine, Timers for Travelers, I finished the writing first. I knew I wanted illustrations throughout the zine, some hand-drawn and some digital. I decided to lay out the zine in Canva so that I could combine text, digital elements, and hand-drawn elements.
I’m really happy with how the zine came out, so I want to document my process. This is less a tutorial of Canva and more a walk-through of how I used it to put together my zine.
Canva is a free tool for graphic design. Although there are paid tiers, everything in this post was done with the free version. You can use Canva directly in an internet browser and there are apps you can download, too. If you haven’t used Canva before, you’ll need to create a free account.
Click on the Create a new design button and then click on Custom size. Enter the dimensions for your zine pages. For example, a quarter page zine would be 4.25 inches wide x 5.5 inches high. This file becomes your working file.
Make the pages of your zine with whatever method works for you. You can write text directly in Canva. I find it easier to do all my writing first in a word processor (I use Google Docs) and then copy and paste text into Canva.
Canva has a lot of graphic elements and images you can use for free. All the photos available in Canva are stock images from Pexels and Pixabay, and they are royalty-free.
Since you can upload images into Canva, you can draw on paper and scan pages. Then upload your drawings into Canva, and add them to your working file.
Note: Add page numbers last! If you’re making pages and don’t know what order they’re going to be in yet, don’t number pages. Instead, add page numbers after you have pages arranged in the order you want for the finished zine.
I like leaving my working file as is, like a draft. So when it’s time to print my zine, I make a copy of the working file (File » Make a copy). This becomes the print file.
Since the pages will be printed on 8.5 x 11-inch paper, cut, folded, and stapled, they need to be arranged in the correct order for printing.
To figure out the print order of the pages, I make a mock-up version of the zine with scrap paper. There are lots of ways to do this. Here’s how I figure out page order.
Go to the print file in Canva and rearrange the pages for printing. You can drag and drop pages or use the up and down arrows above each page to change where they are.
When I’m moving a lot of pages around, I like working in grid view. Click on the button in the bottom right of the screen that looks like a stack of papers with a number on it.
When you’re done arranging pages, download the print file as a PDF. Click on the Share button (top-right). Then click on Download. For “file type,” choose “PDF Print.”
Open the PDF file on your computer. Go to print settings. Find the option for pages per sheet, and change this to 4. This will print 4 of your zine pages on one 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. Make sure two-sided printing is selected.
Print your zine. Cut the pages in half horizontally and then fold them. If you ordered the pages correctly in Canva, then the pages should be in the correct order when you assemble them as a booklet.