Coursework – Ashley's OCA Illustration BA Blog

After receiving my tutor feedback for this assignment I wanted to implement some of the changes she had mentioned and push my illustrations a little further. I really enjoyed working on this assignment am quite keen to keep developing these characters and see how they evolve over time, as I learn more and more during the duration of my course.

Reflecting on my research

My tutor had asked me to take time to consider my research on comic strips and discuss what I had learned about this area. When I used to get the train in London, I would read the comic strips in the Metro Paper, my original layout idea was inspired by this. I was thinking of displaying my images in one continuous strip so that they could be intended for a space at the bottom of a page in a newspaper. However, when I tried this I realised I had too many images to work this way, as the images would end up too small in order to fit across the page. Therefore, I decided to place them in two rows instead, after looking at reference of comic layout.

My research lead me to look at and consider different types of layouts and think about how I could explore this further in my next modules. The comics I looked at, such as newspaper strips, Garfield and Beano tended to have evenly spaced lined boxes or could have no spacing at all. Some of the characters were drawn extending outside of the boxes. Boxes tend to be uniform or various sizes. However, they were always clearly defined and neat. This makes them easy to read. As this is the first comic strip I have done, I decided to keep mine to a simple, clean layout. This was a challenge in itself to get everything evenly spaced and lined up.

The comic strips I looked at, tended to have a simplicity in the visual information contained. They tend to be line drawings, some black and white and some with colour. Most contained backgrounds. My original images did not contain a background so I added this to see how it would look. My tutor had also mentioned this is something I should consider. I much prefer the versions with the background. It gives the strip more substance and context and adds more life and colour into the images. It also shows the cats being inside a house which helps give context, for example, if my comic strip was called, ‘Toby gets a new friend’ etc., which is the idea behind my narrative, it should be clear what is happening in the comic. I could have shown this within the illustrations by perhaps adding a bow to the neck on the first image to give the impression of the female cat being a present. When I showed my DSA study tutor, she had said that because they didn’t have a background, she pictured a background for herself and imagined the cats were in her home. I found this quite intriguing and that got me thinking about the audience and how much of their own imagination they contribute to illustrations they see. Before I re-worked these I did a lot of sketches to learn comic styles using two new books I bought. These are; Sha, B. (2015) Doodle Dogs and Sketchy Cats: fun and easy doodling for everyone. (First Edition) Ash, Ohio: North Light Books. and Hart, C. (2009) Humongous book of cartooning. New York : Lewes: Watson-Guptill Publications ; GMC Distribution [distributor]. From these I learned different head shapes, how to draw different expressions and emotions and I learned to be more confident and bold with my shapes and move away from realism. I did tests to see how different line styles would look, but decided to stick with the line style I had originally used as I liked the soft effect better for this particular set of images.

Another thing my tutor had mentioned was that all my images were from one view point. I looked at the examples she provided as well and revisiting my composition and viewpoint exercise and re-worked some of the drawings so that they included a more varied range of viewpoints. I think this made it harder to create clear context, however, I think as a whole the story can still be read as intended. I am glad I tried this as it has made me think differently and include another dimension to my illustrations.

Sketch book pages showing character development and visuals with new viewpoints

The stories in comic strips are told effectively without words by exaggerating expressions and keeping the images simple and not too busy to distract from the intended point of each frame. A comic strip is a continuation of an evolving story, that each image builds upon. I did show my images to other students and family to check that the message of my comic was well received and the feedback was positive.

I worked in watercolour and then finished the images in PhotoShop.

My Final Images – Photographed version – Layout variation

I photographed my images to get them into photoshop, I do not have my camera and lighting set up with me at the moment and therefore had difficulty getting my photos clear enough with just my phone. The paper texture is very clear and the images have a grey hue that is not in the originals. Despite altering the colours in photoshop I could not find an effective way to correct the grey hue nor the texture, without losing the image quality. I therefore also did a second version where I scanned the images, however the scanner bleached the images. Even though this corrected the paper grain issue, like I had expected, it left the images with limited colour. I lowered the brightness, but still preferred the original painted version as I was unable to get the pink colour back in the images.

Final Images – Scanned version Colour adjusted

Conclusion

I learned a lot by reworking this project. However, I can still see much room for improvement and space to push this further. Part of doing so would require me to learn and improve, as some of the things I would want to do, I do not know how yet or else cannot quite get my hand to do. I am overall pleased with the outcome and much prefer this version of my comic strip. I am grateful for my tutors advice and direction on how I could improve my work and am excited to take this knowledge onto my next module.

For this exercise I was asked to collect as much reference as I could find the 1950s. And to catalogue the information according to these categories:
People and costume
Architecture and interiors
Art – painting, drawing, sculpture
Graphic design – posters, books, typography
Advertising
Transport
Film and TV
Surface pattern and decoration.

The brief was to be eclectic in my sources identify the visual qualities that are universal within the categories – shapes, textures, colours, style and other features.

For my research I chose to concentrate just on 1950s Britain. In Britain, the 1950s was an era where the economy was recovering from the effects of world War one and two. Because Britain was badly damaged by bombing there was a housing shortage which led to many temporary and fabricated houses being built. These were designed in a way that would be quick and easy to build and were pretty simple in design. As the economy grew, people were able to start purchasing items again which led to an booming industry of furniture, appliances and other household items. The 1950s style is quite distinctive from the hairstyles of the men and women, to the outfits that they wore which includes the nipped in waist and A-line skirts of the women and the rounded shapes of household furniture and appliances. Interestingly, one of the popular patterns on fabric that was used to make dresses and curtains etc. was that of the symbol of the atomic bomb.

The 1950s style once again become quite popular in recent years. This includes the rounded style of kitchen appliances and vintage furniture from the 1950s that would be repainted in pastel colours. There is a tendency to relate pastel colours to the 1950s however, from my research I found that this was not actually the case. The colour palette was actually more similar to that of the 1970s with the majority of the furniture including sofas and fabrics being in muted dark colours like Forest Green, dark red and dark blues with brown wooden flooring seeming quite common. In the 1950s they did however seem to like using bright colours, particularly in the kitchen with an example being where a bright blue would be used as the main colour for the work surface, with a matching table top and even matching tiles on the walls.

To go with my research I was asked to make an illustration of someone sitting in a chair surrounded by typical artefacts to give a teenager an idea of the 1950s. For my illustration I chose to draw a man sitting in a chair reading a newspaper, with a cup of tea and a cigarette besides him. Cigarettes were very popular in the 1950s and were even considered to have health benefits. I tried to keep the style of the room in keeping with the 1950s style of furniture and colours used for furniture. Behind the man we can see a doorway in which there is a woman (his wife) who is busy in the kitchen. Although women did work during the war due to necessity, once the war ended so did their careers and they went back to their wifely duties as before. Men were considered the providers and worked and provided income for the household and family. Women on the other hand were expected to care for their husband and the children and take care of the home, this included all cooking and cleaning. My aim was to reflect these gender roles within my illustration as this is a big contrast to how things are in the present day with gender roles.

In order to file my research I created folders on my computer for each of the topic headings and searched on the internet and on various online libraries, including the OCA library and the bridgemen library. Unfortunately my laptop broke a few days after I finished my research so although I had luckily backed up my documents before hand, I am missing the last few days of my research. I did however have the research to hand whilst I was planing out my illustration and drawing the initial pencil drawing. I also had my sketchbook to hand where I had already drawn and been experimenting with the colours I wished to use. At this time, I am writing from my new laptop and am presenting what I have of my research.

Someting I learned from this project is that I need to find a new way or software to keep my research that I am able to label individual images and keep those images on seperate files. For this project, I used a word document for each heading. But I realised that this is not going to be easy to find individual images when I need to go back and use this reference libray I was trying to create. I would also like to keep building on this library to create a vast reference base for all future work.

Work in Progress…

I am quite pleased with how this turned out. I have not had a lot of practice drawing rooms and using perspective in this way, so it started with a bit of trial and error. I used watercolour and gouache to paint this. Paiting is a new medium to me and is one that I am gradually learning. I chose not to use ink on this piece as I wanted to tey to emphasise objects by using more contrast in my painting. I realised that I would like to start to learn how to deplict lighting in my work, be that from lamps or natural light and shadows and also how to paint faces and clothing. This is something that I would like to develop further with my study.

Tag: Coursework

Re-work of Assignment 5

Exercise: Using Reference