Exercise: Abstract Illustration

For this exercise was asked to listen to a piece of instrumental music by musicians such as George Gershwin, the Gypsy Kings, Beethoven, Miles Davis. We were asked to listen to the music and create marks which convey out interpretation of the essence of the mood of the piece.

I listened to songs from each of the musicians to see what appealed most to me as from this list, only Beethoven was I familiar with. The song I chose was called Allegria from the Gypsy Kings. The music is from a group from the south of France that have a flamenco, salsa and pop style. The piece Allegra reminded me of salsa dancing and is a happy, upbeat song, full of energy.

I made marks on my paper whilst listening to the music. I did not look at the paper for most of it and instead made marks based on the rhythm of the music. I carried on until the song finished and then took a step back and looked at what I had on my page. I chose the word ‘passionate’ as an adjective to describe the tone of the piece. I then selected a square of my mark’s to create my abstract illustration with.

Using my selection as the starting point I started to transfer elements of my marks over to a fresh square sheet of paper. I used a combination of pastel pencils, Inktense sticks and watercolour marker to add colour to my illustration. The colours I chose all represent an energetic, bright, happy, passionate tone and to me felt like they represented the Latin vibe I was going for. I tried to keep the colours bright and using various shades, whilst not using more than three colours, so that I did not overload or over work piece.

I enjoyed this exercise as it allowed me to be free and create shapes and an illustration just through listening and feeling as opposed to having a plan beforehand. This allowed me to not over think what I was doing and not worry about the outcome. This was also a quick exercise, which meant that I was not precious about what I was doing as I could easily start again if it did not go right. I am not sure if this would work as the album cover for the chosen artist. Although perhaps with dark text overlaid this would work well. Alternatively, this could be the background with an image in front of it, i.e. a Spanish guitar or a photograph or illustration of the band.

Exercise: Image development

For this exercise, I was asked to cut to L shapes of card or stiff paper and use them to explore formats to zoom in and out of compositions.

The image I chose was a family photo from a holiday a few years ago. I spent a long time trying to find an image as I am very into photography and most of my photographs were already zoomed in and framed so a lot of these were not going to give me enough room to play with. I really wanted to use one of my own photographs however as I thought this would make the subject fun when it came time to draw it.

I created 10 edited versions of my image trying to retain the content, but presenting it in different ways and in different formats.

Although I found it quite easy to create different compositions with this image I found it difficult to find a way to create much interest within the composition. Although I had my main subject matter, which is the girl posing in the pool, it was hard to compose the image in a way that created much interest or focus within the image, without cutting out my main characters of interest. I found that the compositions that had the other people in I liked more, as it created more interest and with the way the framing is, it tends to lead the eye down the image to the main focus and helps set the scene. I feel like some of the compositions become more interesting due to the way they are cropped, particularly composition 9 which is a panoramic view, which creates more drama.

The image I have chosen to draw, is composition 10, where some of the characters are cropped out. Although I like the image better with the other characters and more scenery in the image. I think that in order to convey this as an illustration, I needed to use an image which was zoomed in more, otherwise my main character will be too small to stand out as the focus. Especially as the characters to the left are closer to the camera and therefore appear a lot bigger.

Once I had started to gather my materials and look at the composition more closely, I realised that it would not be very appealing, as an illustration, as the main character still looked too far away. I therefore decided to crop this photo even more to create a new composition.

For my final image, I decided to move the characters closer together as they felt a bit too far apart and separate before. I also left out certain elements in the background as it was quite busy and did not add much to the scene. Some of the things in the composition like the third character and the ball. I also removed, as the third character can barely be seen and I felt like they were doing nothing for the scene and would also perhaps look awkward in the frame.

For this image. I researched cartoon women, including Disney characters to see how they drew facial features and hair. I wanted to keep this image quite simple and this is not a finished piece. My goal was to focus was on learning about composition rather than doing a technical drawing. Therefore, I chose to draw in a cartoon style as this was something fun to try and is not something I have done much of. Although I struggled to get a composition that I liked out of these photos, I enjoyed doing the illustration and the exercise has been useful for understanding composition and understanding what does and does not work. I also feel that it showed me the importance of moving things in different places in the image and trying different layouts as then I could improve the composition by moving the focus to elements of my illustration that I wish to bring to the forefront.

When I got to the end of this exercise and started to add to my learning log I read through the instructions again to check I hadn’t missed anything, and I realised that I had misinterpreted the brief. I remembered that I needed to make an illustration of my composition, but I had missed the part that had said a poster with text. I realise that my illustration does not lend itself to well to a poster, as that is not the purpose I had intended for it. I added a border and thought about the word and what text would work for this and decided on the word ‘stressed’ with a question mark. The word is contradictory to the scene as the characters look very happy and relaxed. Therefore, ‘stressed?’ Is intended as a question to the viewer, suggesting that perhaps if they are feeling stressed that this is what they need, i.e. a holiday.

I feel like overall this image works with the text as it does convey a meaning and this scene is eye-catching. I think if this was to be worked as a poster I would need to do lots of different sketches and mockups and play around with the colours and text a lot more. If I was to develop this image further. I would redraw the image as it is not technically sound and look at other colour options and mediums.

Exercise: Reading an image

Picture content:

A Dragon

Treasure; gold coins, a throne, jewels.

Weapons and armour

People x2

A cave

A torchlight (fire)

Lit-up room from the fire

A stoney floor

Cave opening (doorway)

The image here by Mark Oliver, is of a dragon in a cave surrounded by treasure, armour and weapons, in the room with him are two characters. I am unclear about the gender of the lead character.I believe it may possibly be female due to the long hair, but the scene makes me initially assume that it is a male character. This could be simply due to the quality and size of the print as it is difficult to see. However, I do not feel that the gender of this character would explain nor take away anything from this narrative.

The scene seems to be about two characters that have either found or have intentionally been looking for a Dragon, in a cave that is guarding a pile of treasure. There are weapons and suits of armour in the cave in piles, which could suggest that they are there from the failed attempts of men that have come to take the treasure from the Dragon. In the scene, the Dragon is asleep and there is one character in the lead with a torch, that is pointing towards the Dragon and a second character that looks like he is hiding behind the first character and is pointing back in the other direction away from the Dragon, suggesting that they should go back and not wake the Dragon.

This image uses both a hot and cold pallete, the hot areas are used for the main subjects, i.e. the dragon and the fire which is lighting up the cave in hot tones. It is also used on the faces and hair of the characters which makes them stand out. Although the second character is cooler than the first, leading him to recede slightly. The core colours are used mainly for the actual cave e.g. the walls and the floor. A lot of texture is used in this image, particularly on the floor, which helps identify the scene as a cave and also on the cave walls. This is more subtle in the cool areas of the cave and quite dominant in the area of the cave that is lit by the torchlight. This makes this area stand out as a focal point. There is a lot of detail used on the Dragon himself and the most detail is in the foreground of the image with the background being slightly out of focus. There is a definite contrast and a stronger contrast with the hot elements that helps bring them into focus and pushes the cool colours that use less contrast into the background.

I believe there is significance in the colours used for the story. The hot colours bringing certain parts of the story into focus as a main element. In contrast the cool colours are used to push those areas back with less focus on them. The Dragon being a hot colour could imply the significance of Dragon’s breathing fire and the characters having a fire torch with them ties those two elements and ideas together. The torchlight is creating a warmer, brighter glow on the Dragon, whereas in the shaded parts of the Dragon, his colours are cooler.

The most significant part of this image that the artist seems to want you to focus on are all in warm colours, including the faces and hands of the two characters. The other elements in the image are cooler, which takes the focus off of them. There are a couple of the other elements standing out that are warm to medium tones in the throne that the Dragon is guarding and also the green of the character’s outfit. Perhaps this implies that that throne belongs to this character as the two are matching in colour and both highlighted in this bright green.

I believe that the Dragon is a significant part of this image. However, I think that perhaps the character in the bright green and the throne on the right that is in a matching green is the leading element to this story, as they are paired and different in colour to all of the other elements in the image. The Dragon and the fire, I believe, are secondary elements, with the armour and the second character being the third elements. This is because as although these do stand out amongst the background, they are both slightly duller and therefore do not appear to be leading element. I think that the coolest colours being the surrounding caves, sets the scene, but is the least dominant element.

I like the way the bright colours have been used to focus the viewer on certain elements within the image. I think that this image is successful in creating a story and leading the viewer through a journey, very well in just this one image. It gives a lot of information and I found I could easily create a big section of narrative around just this one image. The textured areas in this image seem to not necessarily be the most important areas and therefore the areas are not as in focus and the smooth, clean cut textures, used on the Dragon specifically help him to stand out as the main focus point. My eye on this image tends to lead from right to left, focusing first on the large Dragon and his treasure, that is bright and taking up the main portion of the image. My eye, then works its way across to the left up to the ceiling with the fire and down to the lead character. This then leads me to notice the armour either side and finally the second character. When I first looked at the image I did notice the green throne, but I did not instantly put any value on this. It made me wonder what significance it had, but it took me a while to see what the possible connection between the character and the throne could be. This created interest as the story unfolded gradually.

Exercise: Illustrating Visual Space

For this exercise we were asked to; use Internet searches or our own visual references for each of the following: a tree, a child running or walking, a building.

We were then asked to photocopy them in black and white in different scales and sizes, so that we have several versions of each image. Cut them into individual items with which to work.

Working the square format, arrange some of the cutouts to create a representational image. We may use the distortion of scale of one element compared to another to create an image which is interesting visually.

For this exercise I decided to try using Illustrator for the first time with my tablet as this is software that I would like to learn. I used a photograph that I have from my Lisbon trip and used it as a template and traced the tree. I really liked how the tree was coming out. However, I realised for this exercise that, as I have to cut out the tree I needed less detail. I saved a copy of what I had done and then on a new file, I filled in the gaps on the tree. Once I was done, I printed this out in different sizes. I then did the same with the boy and the house. However, these images I found on Pixabay.

I originally started working on a large format, but then realised I would not be able to scan these into my computer so I changed to a smaller format. I also realised that I had not fully understood the brief and that the images were meant to be black and white, not black on white. However, this still seemed to work okay for this exercise.

When the figure is smaller than the other elements. It makes me wonder what he is doing. It makes my eye travel across the page with him and adds a sense of intrigue. The figure may seem less significant and this gives the building and the tree more of an impression of grandeur and therefore they become overpowering in the image. In some instances, such as test 12, the figure would need to be a lot smaller, so that he would appear to be very far in the distance on the horizon. It was difficult, however, to print him so small, perhaps a tiny drawn figure would have worked better in this instance. When the figure is smaller, it looks as though he is perhaps just jogging or playing through the land around and pass the house. In contrast, when the figure is large as in ‘test 4’, he almost looks like he is running away from something. The large size of him seems almost to create a sense of urgency. Although, of course, he could simply be running for fun as well.

When the elements are right differing angles to each other and at an angle to the frame. This changes the dynamic. I struggled with this as I could not find a way to place my images that made sense. As in ‘test 6’, where it could perhaps suggest that the house and the boy are on a hill. However, I found that in this particular image, it just looked very odd and did not particularly give that impression. I imagine that with different elements such as a tall building that perhaps this would be more effective. However, I believe in test nine that giving the element a slight incline did work better and created the sense of the house being on a hill. Having elements at differing angles could also incite a sense of chaos or perhaps a different world.

When all the elements are completely horizontal and vertical in relation to the frame, the dynamic is one of being grounded and realistic. This makes sense to me and feels familiar to the and therefore does not suggest a different world to our own. Nothing seems out of the ordinary and a sense of realism is suggested. A sense of calm and order.

My favourite composition is ‘test 1’. I like the spacing in between the elements as I feel that this creates a sense of depth to the composition. I also feel like it adds to the story as it makes me wonder where the boy is going and if there is significance to the house and the tree in the background in relation to the boy’s story or if they are just passing elements. I like that the boy is the focus of the frame and I really like the way the tree is overlapped in front of the building to create a sense of dimension and interest. The tree and the building that I chose for this exercise are references from Portugal. I chose these as I already had the image of the tree that I thought was a very appealing shape so I wanted to match the building to the place to set the scene. I do not think that you can tell where this image is based on these elements, however, I do feel that it creates a more interesting composition when the elements are more varied in their shapes and this made it more fun for me to work with. The are a few other compositions that I like to, such as test 2, 4, 7, 10 and 13. I feel that these layouts are also interesting or at least work, whereas the others I am not particularly keen on as I feel they are a bit bland and uninteresting.

Reflection

By doing this exercise, It has made me realise that there are a lot more options that I can and should be exploring when I am coming up with compositions. And that by trying out different compositions, I may find one that works better than my original idea. It may also be that by exploring my options, I may find the composition that I was going to go with, reads in a different way than I had intended. Therefore, by experimenting more, I may find a better composition that presents my story in a more effective manner.

I think that I understood the brief. However, I feel like I was missing an opportunity to explore interesting compositions as I was not quite sure how to go about this with just my free elements and the particular shape of the building. I had, I do feel perhaps if I had had a different element will shape building, or perhaps a much smaller size of building that maybe then I could have created more compositions with the elements being at differing angles to each other and to the frame. I am glad that I got to use this exercise is a chance to start to learn Adobe Illustrator and I am feeling like I am learning a lot of different things at the moment, which is very exciting and I look forward to being able to incorporate the things I am learning into my future work.

Lisbon group collaboration project

I recently participated in a group collaboration project with 6 of my fellow students from the Lisbon trip. This was led by one of the students, Martine Elliott by one of the students. For this group project. We took a photo that was taken during a Lisbon trip of the Paula Rego Museum and divided this into six sections. We each picked a section with the idea that we each used whichever mediums we wanted to recreate the tile that we were given. Once we had all completed our sections. These were then handed back to the student leading the project, who then pieced them together to create one piece of work.

I really enjoyed doing this collaborative project, partly due to not feeling any pressure for it to be good, as it was not going to be marked and was purely for fun. I therefore decided to take what I had learnt in Lisbon from my tutors and fellow students and apply that to this painting. One of the things I mentioned in Lisbon, is that I have not been very explorative in my artwork. I wanted to set myself the task of pushing my boundaries and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Whilst in Lisbon, we experimented as a group with India ink and made a big old mess! This was really fun and made me realise that sometimes I need to experiment and to do artwork that I do not need to take so seriously.

My arrival back from Lisbon was timed perfectly with my mark making project for key steps, part two. Inspired by Lisbon, I completed my mark making project and then did this group collaboration. For this painting. I used ‘Viviva Colorsheets’ to paint with which are described as super vivid, transparent watercolours. They come in a paper pad rather than paint in pots which is very handy for carrying around when on location. I found these colours to be extremely bold and bright and was inspired by these to create the colour palette that I did.

Once I had finished my painting. I was not so sure about the building and wondered if I should have painted it all one shade, so that the sky and the tree stood out more. However, now that I look back at this painting. I do not feel so overwhelmed by the brightness of the building and I do see the other elements in the painting as competing. This was very enjoyable to make and these are definitely techniques, I would also like to try again, perhaps on other assignments. I particularly liked the technique for the sky and I really liked the tree which was my main focus, with my plan being to incorporate blues into the highlights, as opposed to using more realistic colours. This did not take me much time to complete, I think this is partly due to me not being so precious with it.

I choose this part of the grid as it was the most interesting to me, due to it having varied subjects i.e. buildings, tree, hedges.

The original photo of the Paula Rego Museum

Due to the success of the grid collaboration. We are now embarking on a second collaboration project led by one of the other students in the group. I am looking forward to participating in this next collaboration project.

Assignment two: Point of Sale Display

The brief for this assignment was to create images which will be used within a campaign for a supermarket to package and promote a range of seasonal foods.

We had to create an illustration of fruit or vegetables. One illustration for each of the ranges; summer and autumn.

These images were to be objective and based upon direct observation. The brief asked us to consider putting ourselves in the place of the customer and asking, ‘does this look edible?’, ‘Would I like to eat it?’ They asked us to be especially conscious of the way we use colour to describe tone, shadow and surface marks as poor colour choices can result in good-looking, mouldy, battered or ultimately unappetising.

I considered these questions and remember reading or hearing about this topic before with making sure that colour and texture are considered in food illustration to make sure look appetising.

With a visual notebook and used the Internet to find photographs from inside supermarkets. I would have gone to visit some stores, but due to Covid this was not going to be practical and I was definitely not able to take photographs in store. I did struggle to find examples of display boards and illustrations on fruit and veg packaging in the supermarkets. Partly this was due to the fact that most of the supermarkets actually use photographs rather than illustrations for their display boards and illustrations in hand display boards are generally used for other items in store and other sections more than the fruit and veg aisles.

I did however find a few examples and found that Waitrose in particular does use illustrations on the packaging and I looked at the artist’s work on her agents website which showed these illustrations. The majority of examples of more elaborate display boards using illustration, I actually found in other countries such as Canada and America.

I looked at food illustrators work and found varying styles, some of which I did not like so much and some of which I really loved such as Liz Pepperell. Her colour palette is really rich and I love the way she makes food look tasty, particularly the one she did with the orange pieces that look really juicy. Another artist’s work that I loved is Liam O’Farrell. I really love the colour palette uses and the style of his illustrations. They remind me of another artist named Holly Exley that I have seen do food illustration, amongst other types of illustration. She tends to use lots of blues and purples in her shading, so her images are not realistic, but the colour palette is very beautiful and interesting.

I had a go at copying a couple of the artists illustrations or illustration style. However, this did not go well. I found it extremely difficult to decipher what it was they were doing with their paint and realised it was better that I did not try this and just tried my own being inspired by their colour pallets rather than trying to use too much of their styles.

My failed attempt at studies of the artists work.

I did some mind maps of both autumn and summer fruits and vegetables to find out what grows in Britain during each season. From this I selected the fruits and vegetables to include in my mood board. I decided to go with summer fruits and autumn vegetables. This is because the autumn fruits list is a little sparse, whereas the autumn vegetable list is very long and therefore it made more sense to do it that way round. I was also quite keen to do fruit for my summer illustration.

My tests of painting autumn vegetables – Watercolour and Gouache.

My test paintings of the autumn vegetables went quite well. I was happy with how they came out. I participated in a group session with OCA tutor Bee Willey and after showing her these images and discussing with her. She suggested that I work a lot larger so that I am able to create fine details easier and also to try acrylic inks to paint as I mentioned that I was concerned with watercolour and gouache that it will sometimes struggle to get the paint colours as bright as I want them to be. I said that I do have a tendency to work very small and that this is a habit that I would like to get out of, but also that I really would like to experiment with working on a bigger scale to see how that affects my work. For my test paintings. I used masking fluid on some of them to keep the highlights and then painted over the top. I did a few different versions of the strawberries until I found one I liked the look of. However, I did quite like my Rasberry, but I wasn’t sure about how strong the highlights were. I decided that I would work on a large scale for my final piece, so I would not use masking fluid. I would just leave out the highlights.

My tests of painting summer fruits – Watercolour and Gouache.

Small test painting with FW acrylic inks.

I have acrylic inks in my supplies, but I have only used them to paint on a very small scale. I hadn’t considered them as an option for this project until it was mentioned by Bee. I therefore did a small test with them before I started painting my final piece, and I found them to paint very smoothly and will easily blendable. After my test I was very happy with how it looked and was now confident that acrylic inks would work for my painting.

I decided to work on each vegetable as an individual painting rather than altogether, so that I could work on a larger scale and because if I was to make a mistake on one of them. I would be able to redo them without having to redo all of them. I only had to redo one of them, which was the butternut squash that was because I was not happy with how it was coming out and messed up with the shading. This resulted in the image looking muddy and the shading harsh and not blended well. This took quite a long time to paint, but I did enjoy painting them. I was happy with how they turned out, especially as apart from my practice pieces. This was the first time I’ve ever painted vegetables and I was using acrylic inks, which are not particularly familiar with. I do really like the vibrant colours and was sure to not use black unless I really had to, to darken the colour so that they did not become muddy and caused the food to look mouldy or unappetising.

Once I had painted each of the vegetables. I then layered them to test roughly how they would look to see if it was going to work. I then started to photograph them and put them into photoshop as raw files. At this point I was mainly just removing the backgrounds and correcting the colours so that they matched the original colours. I edited each of the paintings individually 1st to remove the backgrounds and then I compiled them onto a 12 x 12 image and move them around to find a composition that I liked. I did struggle with this a little bit as I realise that perhaps I should have done the marrow on a slight angle as it looks a bit flat just being on the side. However, I found a composition that was not too bad and that is what you see below.

I then started to play around with background colour to try to find one that would not overpower my paintings. It took a little while as the colours I would associate with autumn that I would ordinarily have used were already in my painting. When I used a green or an orange, for instance, it did not enhance the image and I could not seem to find a contrasting colour that worked for this image. I eventually settled on the light peachy colour as this did not overwhelm the image.

I needed to find a way to fit some text into the empty space. There wasn’t quite enough space to have the text horizontally as this would have resulted in it being quite small. Therefore, I decided to try carving the text so that it fit with the shapes of the vegetables. I also wanted it to be clear and readable, so I did not want to go too elaborate.

For my final image above. I learned how to add shading on Photoshop, although I’m not entirely sure how successful that was, for this particular image, it is now a new technique that I have in my skill set that I can use for later projects.

Composition Sketch for my fruit painting

To get started on my Summer Fruits project, once I had collected all my research and did some tests, I started to sketch out a loose composition sketch to try to plan how my painting should look. Once I had done this, I used the reference material and moodboard. I had collected and begun a fresh sketch on A3 watercolour paper. For this I used a watercolour pencil, so that my colours did not become grey or muddy. Once this was done, I started to paint with acrylic inks as I had done with my vegetable paintings.

I decided to paint the fruit as one piece, rather than individually. I had hoped that this would save time, however, in the end, I think it took just as long as the vegetables did. Maybe even longer due to the fact that the objects were smaller, so the details were trickier to paint. The berries were generally much more time-consuming and difficult to paint and the vegetables, as it took some time to paint the blackberries, for instance, due to the nature of their make-up. I was trying to give them a 3D effect, however, I was not aiming for them to be realistic and was trying to strike a nice balance.

I had to change my composition a little bit once I had put it onto Photoshop because it was not going to work with the square, 12 x 12 format. I therefore moved the cherries so that they were in a different place. This also gave me the chance to resize them as I felt that they were a little small on my original painting.

Once I was happy with my composition and had adjusted the colours to how I wanted them. I started to add a background layer and try out colours. I added the text and tried different fonts and sizes to see what would work alongside my image. I tried various colours and fonts until I found one that I was happy with. Above are some examples of these.

Reflection

For my final image. I added shadows in the same way I had with vegetables. This was to try to ground my painting so the berries did not like they were floating. I wonder if they would have looked better if they were a blue or purple colour rather than black shadows. I would have done this if I was painting them, but as I was following instructions and learning how to do them for the first time, I did not change the colour. I realised during this assignment that my computer does not have a good screen as I really struggled to see the shadows as I was adding them. And yet when I viewed them from another angle, they looked very heavy. Also, once I had transported my final image into another format and viewed it on my phone, the image background was a lot brighter than it had shown in Photoshop.

Overall, I am happy with my images and I feel that I met the brief. I did find this assignment challenging, as I am still new to Photoshop. Therefore, once I had put my images into Photoshop, I found that my skills limited my possibilities for what could be done with the final pieces. I am happy that I learnt some new techniques. I also learned my current limits (or some of them) for using Photoshop. I did try to use the 3D tool to create more interesting text. However, I was unable to do so as my computer could not run it and unfortunately just froze. On looking at my paintings. I am happy with how they look, in particular with the fruit. I really liked the biggest strawberry and I liked the way the blackberries came out. I did not manage to capture the juiciness of the berries which is something, perhaps, that is lacking in my image and could have improved it. This is something I could explore further with my painting and perhaps do some tutorials to learn how to do this.

Key Steps Part Two – In Summary

Key steps part two has been quite a challenge and I have enjoyed the exercises and doing this assignment. I have learnt many new skills and techniques, that I can now take on to other projects. I finally feel like I have found a pace for my course and feel like I am progressing. When I look back over the past two months I have done a lot of work in a short space of time and feel quite a sense of achievement about this. This makes me excited to continue on to part three and I am looking forward to the next set of challenges and opportunities for growth in my learning.

Key steps part two has been quite a challenge and I have enjoyed the exercises and doing this assignment. I have learned many new skills and techniques, that I can now take on to other projects. I finally feel like I have found a pace for my course and feel like I am progressing. When I look back over the past two months I have done a lot of work in a short space of time and feel quite a sense of achievement about this. This makes me excited to continue on to part three and I am looking forward to the next set of challenges and opportunities for growth in my learning.

This year and especially since my study trip to Lisbon. I have really immersed myself in my course and in OCA life. I have really enjoyed having a group of peers that I can talk to. This gives me a sense of community and support, and I do not feel isolated in my studies anymore. We keep in contact via a WhatsApp group and have a second Lisbon catch up session coming up with the tutors in August, which I’m looking forward to. The Lisbon students are from a mixed range of disciplines and I am the only illustration student amongst the group. I have been very inspired by their work and they have helped me to view art from different perspectives and not be scared to try new techniques and make a mess. I have also been participating in group sessions with OCA tutors, which have been very helpful and once again build a sense of community and help me connect with fellow students. I have been connecting with my fellow illustration students a lot more, this past month, which is very helpful and nice to feel like part of the OCA community and no longer just an impostor. (Now that I am actively studying.) I do struggle a lot with self-motivation and communicating with my fellow students and tutors has really helped me find motivation and purpose.

I do tend to struggle at first understanding the briefs and have to re-read some of them over and over and ask others how they interpret them, to see if I am understanding them correctly. This does cause me to hesitate on starting a project and I really have to push past my fear of failure and perfectionist tendencies. Although helpful in some instances, it does tend to hold me back.
I am finding, however, that now that I have processes in place. I find it easier to start projects, as I have steps that I can follow i.e. Research, moodboards and mind maps. These steps, stop me getting stuck procrastinating and mean that I know what I need to do to get started. Once I have started, I have no trouble continuing. It is just the initial starting of a project. I am happy that I am finding a way around this and I hope that this will continue to improve as time goes on.

Exercise: Visual metaphors

For this exercise, we were asked to collect as many examples of visual metaphor as we can find. I used a thesaurus to look up the meaning of a visual metaphor. I then started to collect images I found on the Internet. My research was a little limited due to co-feared and as I have no magazines in the house other than travel magazines and no newspapers, and I feel that these would have been good sources of visual metaphors. However, I did find a variety online from different magazines and advertisements. As well as some examples of some illustrations from an unknown source.

We was asked to choose from one of the following phrases; reaching retirement, dreams of romance, broken relationship, censorship of the press, high achievement, economic catastrophe.

After trying to think of ideas for each of the six I decided to go with high achievement as this is the only one I could think of any ideas for. It was asked to create a drawn visual list of objects and subjects which could be used to symbolise them. The brief does say not to be overly concerned with the aesthetic quality or technical accuracy in the drawing, and to see this is the an extension of your visual shorthand.

I found this exercise extremely difficult, as I just could not come up with many ideas, even though I had looked at examples. I feel like this is something I am not particularly skilled at, and my mind would just go blank. I wonder if this is possibly due to my dyslexia. Even now as I write this in my learning log no new ideas or understanding of this exercise comes to me. I asked my family if they could tell what my drawings were meant to be. They were aware that they were meant to be visual metaphors. I received mixed feedback on these. They tried to help give me ideas of what I could do, so I tried these out too. In the end, I ended up going for the word high achievement and created the image below.

Reflection

I was very frustrated with how much I struggled with this exercise, especially as I understand its importance in illustration. However, I hope that as my skills develop during my course that perhaps this is something that I can try to improve or that will improve naturally as I progress. I’m not completely dissatisfied with my image as I feel like he could be developed into an interesting image or at least a fun image. But I feel like so much more could have been achieved and explored with this exercise had I been able to grasp the concept better.

Exercise: Choosing content

For this exercise with asked to read an extract of a book by Michael Innes adapted from the Daffodil Affair. We were then asked to make notes on the following questions:

If this were to be made into a film. What would the main character be like?

Firstly, I decided that my character was going to be based in the 1940s as the text said during wartime London. However, it did not specify which war. I answered this question based on the facts from the extract and then imagined my own character traits. The facts were that he is a middle-aged man, described as having a fixed contraction on his brow. My ideas without he had his hair neatly gelled back into the side parting is clean-shaven, stern -looking and serious with lines on his face showing years of seriousness and worry. He is clean and neat with a London accent and is a family man. The character is a man that works in Scotland Yard, it does not specify as to whether he is a detective or not. But it says that he controls ‘the file of police papers which dealt with the abduction and subsequent history of feeble minded girls.’ It was quite easy for me to imagine his style due to my extensive knowledge on this period due to my background as a make-up artist. Details like having a man’s side parting on the left is considered to be a defining feature of hairstyles of the period. This meant I had quite a clear image of my character in my head just from reading the story and by deciding what decade he was from.

What clothes with the character be wearing?

Brown suit, tie, polished shoes. Briefcase (on his desk). Smart/office worker.

What furniture is in the main area in which the action takes place?

In the excerpt, a big desk is mentioned. I also imagined some filing cabinets and file boxes as the man keeps files as part of his job. However, I did not imagine there to be anything else in the room as the description does say that the room is empty except a big desk.

For the next part of the exercise was asked to: Collect a visual reference for the items on our list. Find a reference book or website for this era. Use the Internet to do an image search. Be selective. Don’t go for the first image and counter try to remember your own vision of the story and reflect this in your choices. Stick these images onto a large sheet of paper or individual notebook. I did my visual notebook in my sketchbook and started finding images for the items I had on my list for the character either to be wearing or items of furniture in the room.

I then found some great films from wartime Britain on the ITV website, one of which was called; ‘Routine Job’. It was about detectives in the Flying Squad, Scotland Yard.1946. I am unsure if any of the characters in this film are real or just based on real characters, as I was unable to find any details on this. However, the locations are real and the costumes or clothes that the characters are wearing our typical of the 1940s, and therefore fit very well with how I imagined my character. This film is very interesting and shows a typical day of a detective from the flying squad. During the film, the file room at Scotland Yard is shown. This was very interesting to me as it is probably where the character in our excerpt would work. However, from the description given this is not at all how I imagined his office, nor how it is described. The rooms I saw in the film are occupied by multiple workers and are not in any way empty. I also included some pictures of Scotland Yard’s buildings as when I read the excerpt and imagined the scene, I imagined more modern windows than they actually were, due to the description given by the writer.

The next task was to explore textual and colouristic visual brainstorming and idea generation.

We were asked to ‘choose a word which we feel captures the mood we would like to convey. Collect and create textures and colours we associate with this word to make a mood board. Start with a broad vision to describe the overall colour or tone of the image, not specific elements of it. Be minimal and selective, and gradually add textures and colours that complement the general impression. ‘

I really enjoyed doing this mood board and had quite a different approach with it, from the ones I have done for previous exercises. My chosen word for my mood board was ‘stark’. I started my mood board by adding colours and textures with gouache paint. I also used patches of colour with metallic pencils and markers, then I went around the house and did some texture rubbings. I had seen my fellow students do these on my Lisbon trip and thought that it would be good to try that in order to add textures to my board. I did rubbings of an Artex wall, the steps of a metal ladder, wooden floorboards, the bottom of a saucepan, a woven basket and a couple of other items I found around the house. I really loved the one of the floorboards, but the one that interested me the most was the one of the metal ladder treads as it reminded me of pinstripe material.

My next task was to ‘create a simple portrait (figure, or head and shoulders) of the character, using the reference you have gathered.‘

‘Use sketchbooks to help you to select and edit from your reference materials and explore where to position your figure within the frame format of the picture make the shape based on any book you have to hand.

Use the colours, textures and qualities you assembled for your mood board to render the portrait. You may literally collage these textures into a drawing, or convey the tonal qualities of the mood bored through the way that use materials and mark making.’

A book I had to hand was this one called Mr Darcy, Vampyr by Amanda Grange. I liked the composition of this book cover and wanted to use this for the composition of my drawing. I did some test sketches of the composition and also some quick sketches to try to put on paper the image of my characters features that I had in my head. This was however quite hard to do.

It was at this point that I realised that it may be interesting to incorporate some of my rubbings directly into my drawing. As you can see from the top thumbnail I tested this out and really liked the result. I went and did some more rubbings of a couple of the textures I liked from before, with varying shades of pressure so that I had some dark for shaded areas and lighter for highlighted areas. I used the steps of the ladder again to create some rubbings for the tie and again for the blazer, but this time by moving the paper in small increments and re-rubbing I created a different looking texture and second type of pinstripe.

For my final image, I cut out sections of my rubbings and placed them on to my drawing. To create my characters suit. Once I had done this, I added shading with graphite to add a further dimension to the drawing.

Reflection

I am overall very happy with how my final image turned out. With each new exercise and assignment that I do. I am learning something new and this to me is very exciting, as most of the things I am doing, I would never have thought to try or bothered to try without these kind of briefs. Therefore, I am finding that my course is opening my mind up to new techniques and possibilities. Even if some of them I do and I then decide it is something that I would not like to do again, it is still good to try and each time there is something that I learn that I can take on to my next piece of work.

The reference material. I gathered was essential in making this piece seem realistic and fit with the era. Even though I did not need to use most of my references for my final image. It helped me to develop the character, and if I was to go on to draw this character in a room or in a story, I now have all of the visual information that I would need to start this process. I had sufficient reference material to create my image in terms of context. I kept it quite simple and the main focus was the suit in which I used my reference images to make sure that it was of the right cut and style as well as pattern and tone.

I would really like to further explore using rubbings in my illustrations in the way that I did here. I started the drawing of the face before I did the suit and then after thought that actually, I would have really liked to have found a way of perhaps using rubbings to create his face as well. I was quite impressed with how I managed to draw his face so well from memory as I did not use reference for his features, I just tried to picture my character in my mind. He did change and develop quite some bit in my head, as I considered the brief more. The biggest change being that I had originally envisioned him much younger, but later realised he would be a much more interesting character to draw if he was older. I realise that his eye is a little big and the other one I messed up and ended up having to shade out completely, when I had intended on shading it, but leaving some kind of pronunciation to suggest an eye.

This was the most enjoyable exercise so far, as I got to be creative and inventive. Had time permitted, I would have liked to have tried more versions of this character using the same techniques for his suit and seeing what else I could do with his face and also redrawing him in the way that I had intended, as well as experimenting with what rubbing textures I could use to create a human face. I do intend on trying this out again soon.

Exercise: Using black and white

For this exercise we had to produce a line visual around one of the following words: Sea, Extraordinary, Building or Journey. Before I started. I had a look through some of my books to find examples of black and white or high contrast illustrations. I have included a few of these here. These are from the book: Masters of Sketching by 3Dtotal Publishing.

Kristjana S. Williams
Victoria & Albert Museum interactive print journey.

I chose images that I liked and that were all quite different. The ones that stood out in reference to this assignment were the images by Daniel pudles and Jan Pienkowski. Daniel pudles work because it is a lino print and therefore lends itself very well to a two colour palette. I really love Jan Pienkowski’s illustrations and although one of them has colour. The main portion of the image would work also in just black and white and uses very interesting silhouettes and lots of varied shapes, that created a piece that really captures your attention. I really took my time looking at it thoroughly, to see all of the different elements and characters within the image. I did also look at some other lesser know artists on Instagram and on a general google search to find other examples until I felt more confident about what I was trying to acheive.

I then started by brainstorming each of the words so that I could come up with some ideas and choose the word I wanted to use for my image.

Once I had done my mind maps I chose a few of the ideas and did some quick sketches to see what would work and which ones I liked that I would want to develop more.

I liked the idea of under the sea, however, I could not think of an idea that would work with this style. The idea I had of the man walking down the street would have worked very well with the style, yet I did not want to create a piece that looked dated. I wanted to try creating something with the old style, but with subject matter that could represent the current day. I therefore settled on the scene with the toddler on a tricycle.

I took my initial sketch and did a perspective drawing. Once I was happy with how it was looking. I then inked over the pencil markings to create the final line drawing and rubbed out the pencil markings. After this I scanned it onto my computer and put it into Photoshop, where I removed the background so that only the line drawing was left and saved the file and printed a copy. I then changed the colours so that they were inverted, I saved this as a new file and then printed two copies.

Once I had both my original and my inverted copy, I then started to cut out shapes from my inverted copy and place them onto my original copy. I used white tack to keep the pieces in place. Whilst I experimented with the placement.

I really struggled with choosing the colours for the toddler and his tricycle as it was hard to see what balanced him well. I therefore spent a lot of time changing his clothes and hair around to see which would work best. The tricycle tyres dictated to some level, what colour I could use for the boys clothing, as I felt it important to keep the tyres black as this made more sense. I would have liked to have the car tyres black also, but then they would have been invisible against the road and the road was more important to have black. This was so that the grass surrounding it and the pavement stood out in contrast.

Reflection

I spent a lot of time trying different layouts with the cutouts and found this to be quite challenging to get it to look right. I think that now I have tried the exercise I would perhaps have used a simpler design or designed it in a way that it was easier to colour. However, I would not have understood how to do this until I had tried the exercise myself and learnt from the problems I encountered. I am not entirely sure if I met the brief as it said that there should be no lines left by the end of the cutting and pasting. However, I found this impossible to do and do not think that I could achieve this or know how to achieve this on this particular drawing. In doing so, I would have lost a lot of the important elements like the curb and some of the details on the boy and his tricycle. I found this brief very difficult to and do not feel that the instructions were clear. It would have been helpful to have a simple example of the technique.

In conclusion, I can see how important it is to think more about the design process for each image I am producing. Overall, I am happy with my image, especially as it is the first time I have tried something like this and it is very different to my usual style and type of work that I do.

References: 3dtotal Publishing (2017) Masters of Sketching. (s.l.): 3DTotal.com.

Exercise: A subjective drawing

For this exercise I had to take an object and write a down a series of words to describe it. These words would need to describe its particular qualities. The object I chose was a glass of gin and tonic with fruit in it. The words I chose to describe it are; refreshing, fruity, bubbly, cold, wet, delicious.

We were then asked to choose one word from our list as the basis of our idea and explore the idea visually by making a mood board. Due to the Covid 19 lockdown. I have limited materials with which to make a mood board. However, I do have some travel magazines and National Geographic magazines left over from my last mood board. Therefore from these and also from searching the Internet, I managed to find the images I wanted for my board.

The word I chose to use for my moodboard was ‘refreshing’. I looked through magazines to find images that represented this word. Once I had finished with the magazines, I did a web search to find other images that I wanted for my board, such as the cucumber and mint leaves.

Once I had finished my moodboard I started adding the colours, textures and materials identified during my exploration to my line drawing.

I used artists, masking fluid to keep the area where the bubbles were going to be clear and started to paint. I used Viviva Colorsheets to paint with as I love how vivid the watercolours are.

I am pleased with my final piece. There were many elements to this drawing that were new and experimental for me, such as drawing bubbles and painting in less realistic style’s. This was the also the first time I have used masking fluid. I liked the freedom that this exercise gave me to experiment, as the drawing was subjective rather than objective. Therefore, this was a fun exercise. The only thing I would have liked to incorporate which I did not, is to have the effect of condensation on the glass. I feel like this would have reinforced the idea of a cold, refreshing beverage. I think this would have been quite difficult to draw on a technical level, but is something that I would quite like to experiment with, to see if I can find a way of effectively communicating that.