Exercise: Giving Instructions

For this exercise I started by collecting reference material of a range examples of instructions. The thing I noticed most about these are that they tend to be in block colours or line drawings and tend to be clear and have images on a plain or solid colour background.

Collection of examples and reference materials

I chose ‘getting to my house’ as I liked the idea of doing something more personable to me. I started by doing loose sketches and seeing what bits I could cut out and identifying which were the important features or landmarks to be left in.

The design, I decided to go with was the more simplified version leaving in key landmarks that would be easily identifiable and therefore help direct the user.

I worked on an A3 format, which gave me just enough room to be able to draw the characters with enough detail. Once I had completed my initial painting, I decided that I wanted the colours to be bolder and more solid. I was trying to do a pastel colour palette. However, it did not work as intended, most likely due to the use of watercolour. I did want to achieve a hand drawn/hand-painted look. Once I started to re-colour in Photoshop, although I really like the colours I realised that I was not going to be able to achieve what I wanted that way either and decided not to proceed. I therefore have stuck with my initial hand-painted illustration. I think I could have improved this if I knew how to use a software such as illustrator, as then I could have kept the hand drawn feel, but change the colours. I also would have needed to have just a black and white outline drawing in order to digitally colour, this effectively as then the trace tool would have worked on Illustrator. However, as I hadn’t planned it this way from the beginning it was not going to work.

A as well as using a pastoral colour palette, I decided to use a traffic light system as a means of directing the map user. Green for the correct path and read for the incorrect path or stop points. I tried to make these brighter so that they stood out and made sure that everything else was more subtle. I showed this to a few of my close family members and asked them if they knew what it was. Each of them said that it was a map to our house, but recognised that I had removed many elements, which I had done to simplify the image so that it was not too busy and distracting.

I found this to be a useful exercise and with that I have recognised some limitations that I have. I also am starting to realise that I do not like to do commercial illustrations such as these, and that they do not fit my style or current skill set. However, I do hope to expand my skills so that I can find a task like this much more simple in future. In order to do this I need to set aside dedicated study time just for learning new programs and features that are not in conjunction with the assignment or exercise. At the moment I am struggling to schedule this in with working full-time and also trying to complete this module in such a short time frame. Once I have caught up. I intend on doing classes to improve my knowledge of digital art techniques.

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.

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: Using Reference

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.

Lisbon Study Trip

I recently attended the OCA Lisbon study visit. The trip was three days of Gallery visits lots of walking and sketching on location. Our tutors were Michelle Whiting and Diana Ali. This is the first study visit I have attended and the first time that I have met any OCA tutors and students. We arrived on the Monday and met with the other students at the hotel for dinner where we introduced ourselves before retiring to our rooms to prepare for the next day. We met in the morning and there we met our tutors and the rest of our fellow students. After our introduction we left for our first outing.

Roof top restaurant – The House of Wonders

These three days were packed with visits to various places. We visited the Museo Berardo where we had an interesting guided tour of a contemporary gallery, my knowledge of contemporary art is very limited, so it was very helpful to have the guide explain the pieces in the gallery. I left with a very different view of these types of artwork than when I went in. We also visited the Paula Rego exhibition at the Casa das Historias which showed a vast collection of her sketchbook work as well as some of her final pieces. I found this exhibition to be extremely inspirational and relative to my studies. I like that she used her art to get a message across, mostly political and quite controversial. It was great seeing her sketches the line style she used the mediums and her experimentation.

We got to see some beautiful sites including the botanical Gardens which hosted an array of cockerel’s and hens, Peacocks, ducks and terrapins, the castle on the sea which was like something out of a fairy-tale with its little beach cove, a harbour and PADA artist in residence in Barreiro, who gave us access to restricted industrial estate that had incredible views across the water of the whole city of Lisbon and a great many thing to draw.

I really enjoyed meeting my fellow students and tutors. We ate amazing food, had a great time with plenty of laughs and I learned a lot from them all and from our visits as well as the guides from the museums. I got to push myself out of my comfort zone a little bit and try new things and it was very interesting seeing my fellow students work and the ways that they approached this. I came back very excited to get back in my studio and am looking forward to incorporating the things that I learnt on the study visit into my future work. I hope to stay in touch with the other students that I met and will hopefully see them again at other study visits. The tutors did an amazing job of organising the trip, giving us a great experience that I will treasure. I had such a great time and am so glad that I went, I really hope that OCA runs more of these types of study trips.