Mark Making and Tone

Today we began Mark Making and Tone. Mark making is an excellent way of shading or adding texture to add depth to an image. I began by going back to the Christopher Lee Dracula image that I drew last week. I replicated that image a few times and playing around with it in different ways such as drawing continuous line to make an image or by adding texture to line work rather than space.

I'm not too keen on either of these images and feel the latter piece looks more like Chairman Mao than it does Christopher Lee. I need to investigate mark making more.

Photoshop Workshop: Week 3

For our final Photoshop Workshop we had an open session where we got on with Studio Brief 2, altering our A5 images using Photoshop.

I began working on my Beach Ball image. I began by cleaning the scanned image up before filling in the ball and sun using the fill tool. I then created several different layers in which I inserted stock images of the sky, the seas and the sand. I played with the saturation and colour of the sea layer to match the colour of the sky to a better degree.

(Beach Ball image)

After this I worked on the Lips image. The lips I had draw were quite full lips so I started by adding a strong red to the image to connote a sense of passion to them. I then replicated the red and placed the copies underneath the first set. This unintentionally made them look like kiss marks. I decided then add a random texture to the image, having felt my elephant image failed due to its plain background. I chose a snakeskin. The dull tones complimente the red to create an interesting tone to the image.

(Lips image)

A Day in the Life: Format Experimentation

On Monday Fred posed a very interesting question. Who had actually thought about the format of the images when we were developing our work from the brief given? I hadn't. I hadn't gave it the slightest thought. How would the format change affect my image? I've gotten so used to drawing in A format.

So we got two A2 sheets of paper and cut them into 16 equal sized pieces each. We then drew a series of images.

(My First images)

I then made a second series, thinking more about how format can compliment my work.

(Second series of image)

I then tried to simplify my designs to use basic imagery to convey a message.

(Simplified Imagery)

Finally I changed the angle of the format I was working with the see if that changed anything.

(Different format simplified imagery)

The imagery worked so much better from this angle. I must remember that when making designs its integral I consider the format from the start of the project. I have until next Monday to develop my work and produce a finished product to be critiqued.

Line Quality (Continued...)

Having been ill over most of last week my desire to work was hampered. I managed to draw 10 images, but not the 15 I was supposed to. Looking back at my work it just isn't good enough. Both quality and quantity are lacking. I'm not experimenting as much as I should and I'm not figuring out what pieces are working as well as others. The work that my peers are producing is amazing but I just don't seem to be able to see or create this for myself. I feel lost with my work at the moment and it is frustrating. However, I must keep going with this. Persistence is key.

I did, however, experiment a bit this week which is something to be positive about. Having worked with Indian ink, my new brush pen, sharpie pens and my fine liners whilst playing with line weight and differing brush strokes. I rarely handle any of these tools so using them and identifying where my strengths lie with each was quite interesting.

Line Quality

We began today by viewing each others work from the last week. The disappointment I feel with my work has grown after seeing the amazing illustrations by my peers. I can't let this get me down though.

Anyway, we were this week introduced to Line and Mark, focusing on line quality specifically. Matt gave us a list of topics to base our work around and I chose 'Horror'. I headed to the library to find some material on horror but the best I could find was The Horror Genre by Paul Wells' it had little imagery within, instead being a very literal book. The library appears to have a very small stock of horror related material so I'm going to have to go elsewhere to find resources.

Photoshop Workshop: Week 2

As well as practising what we learnt last week, this week we learnt how to manipulate layers further and how to add colour as well as textures.

By the end of the session I had finished my first A5 image in photoshop. I originally had a plain grey tone for the elephant and then changed it to elephant skin using a stock image from the internet.

(Stock image of Elephant skin texture)

However it was suggested it should think a bit differently. Why not take a photo of a texture that wouldn't usually be associated with an elephant? So I took a photo of the carpet using my phone and uploaded it before editing it into my final image. The rough grey tone works well in my opinion as a replacement texture.

(Final finished piece)

A Day in the Life: Briefing

On the afternoon of Monday 21st we were introduced to our third brief (our second being the ongoing Photoshop Workshops). We were given a more tighter set of rules in certain ways with this brief. Firstly our three deliverable pieces must be  in these formats;

1 response at 200mm x 200mm

1 response at 105mm x 200mm (portrait) 

1 response at 290mm x 105mm (landscape)

Secondly, we can only use two colours plus stock. Basically limiting us to a maximum of three colours. This prospect interests me as it means I'm going to have to work in ways that I don't usually work in - I'm hoping that it will result in me producing very different final pieces to what I would make if there weren't any limitations. 

The context of the illustrations will be about an article I was given on Friday as I left. The article itself is about smartphones and how they detract from socialising and such. Five words stood out for me in this piece; smartphone, key, money, time and dropping. With these words in mind I found five associated images online and printed them out.

(My five chosen images)

We then chose three of these words/images and wrote down words that we associated with them. Then we gave our work to someone else who wrote objects connected to our word. Then someone else wrote down people associated to the word before another person introduced a place concerning it. 

Finally one last person brought all of these words together and made lists with them, connecting an image at the end.

I thought that this could be an example of how business works - you'll get a set amount of parameters which you have to include in a piece. It was however another task designed to help us generate ideas. This is something that appears to be being drilled into us at the moment, how to generate ideas and how to choose which ones are most useful. I'm going to use these lists over the course of the next week to produce concepts and development work ready for Friday's Peer Review Day.

Drawing from Reference (Continued...)

Continuing on with my reference drawing work I completed the remaining illustrations for the last three reference images I found. Here is an example of each:

I'm quite unhappy with the pieces that I've made here. My illustrations are basically poor facsimiles of the images I used to reference from. There isn't a strong investigation of ideas here and it's clear I'm being quite reserved with my technical ability. I must work on my ability to draw from reference. Maybe I could take away detail to make the images less complicated/more visually appealing?

Your Initial Brief: Peer Review

On Friday 18th we again had a peer review session. These are going to be a common occurrence over the next three years as it is important to gauge how our work is coming along at each stage.

However today's peer review was about our final A2 pieces, what people thought of them and what we ourselves felt about them and the process.

(Progress Crit Sheets)

We began by laying our work out and and taking two feedback sheets. Using these two sheets we went to two other pieces of work and critiqued them in 15 minute intervals. It is important to stress that these reviews were of a serious nature, we agreed earlier to follow a set of rules and conduct ourselves professionally at all times.

From reviewing the work of Rosie and Jessie I came to realise how little experimental work I had done. Once I had an idea I pretty much stuck to this. There needs to be more testing and failing in my work. I cant be afraid of getting something wrong, or my work not looking amazing at its development stage. This is something that was also picked up on in the two critiques I received back cementing my feelings.

(My final piece on display in the studio)

Next week we begin Studio Brief 3 and I plan to take what I've learnt from this and bring it forward into my future work.

Photoshop Workshop: Week 1

We have now began our Photoshop Workshops. I've been looking forward to these as I have had a bit of experience in the past with Photoshop but don't feel I know it as well as I could, furthermore the College Macs are fitted with CS6 which I have never used before.

We began by running over some of the basics such as the marque and layers tools among other things such as grayscale and the heal tool (which I never knew existed!). After this we scanned in the 5 A5 images from the Visual Skills lesson we had last week. We'll use these over the next few weeks to produce digitally realised pieces of work.

(Images about to be scanned)

Among other things we were shown how to use the heal tool to clean these images up as well as rotate them so they fit correctly onto our canvases. We also touch upon maniputaling the levels of an image and the difference between Gray scale and RGB.

Drawing from Reference

We were asked this week to bring in 4 images, one of a man made item, one of a natural thing, another of a facial portrait and finally one of a full figure image of someone doing something. I chose a photo I took of the York City wall, a snail I found crawling across my bedroom window, Kevin Spacey from the film 'The Life of David Gale' and a man from Stylist magazine looking... stylish.

Earlier in the day I had used a brush pen for the first time at the suggestion of Hollie. It felt good to draw with and yielded interesting results. Using a brush pen appears to add weight and more energy to my line work than a fine liner (which I currently use). You have to work to create softer lines.

I began by drawing the man from Stylist Magazine, firstly just an outline missing most detail as I wanted to get an idea of his shape.

After this I drew a second version adding detail to his patterned trousers using fine liner and diluted Indian Ink.

Your Initial Brief: Sketchbook Development

Working in my sketchbook I attempted to get a better idea of how I was going to make my A2 poster for my 'Image, Translation, Communication' brief. 

I began by sketching out a few ideas as to how I wanted my A2 piece to look in way of layout. I decided that instead of keeping my two images completely separate I should incorporate them together, so I drew several concepts involving the elephant image being a series on the film reel.

(Concept Sketches of layout)

I sketched out the elephant head twice using a stock image from the internet.

(Stock Image)

I used pencil crayon and watercolour as it is my mediums of choice at the moment, settling on watercolour as I feel it will translate well on a larger scale. Then I inked them using fine liners of different weights and a Sharpie. I planned on using my 0.8 fine liner on my A2 piece, however I didn't think it would work well on a larger scale. It was around this time I discovered brush pens - Hollie Smith was kind enough to let me experiment with hers on a random sketch I had made so I decided to use that in my final image as it will work better on a larger scale than a fine liner.

(Ink and colouring experimentation)

After this I toyed with my film reel designs. Again, I found an image on the internet of a section of film to use as a reference point from which to work. 

(Film  Reel Stock Image)

I used several inks and watercolour but was unhappy with the results - my girlfriend then suggested using coloured paper or card as it would both save on time, be easier to manipulate and save on money. I could potentially spend a lot of money filling an A2 sheet with black ink. So I went and got some card to work with and found the results to be more than adequate. I feel this method will translate well on a larger scale.

(Film reel experimentation)

I plan on making my A2 sheet on Wednesday, our Studio Development time, in which I will be able to solely concentrating on this project alone.

Your Initial Brief: Concepts and Critiques

My first 64 concept images (concerning the letter J) I completed with relative ease. I had many ideas for them and got them down on paper very quickly. However when I came to my second sheet (involving P) I again began to struggle, many of the images I was drawing had been done before – they were being refined, although I was somewhat unaware of this at the time until it was pointed out to me.

Another issue I faced was that Janin had been watching films involving drug use. Although I feel I had made concepts that conveyed addiction, there was little there to represent film so on my second sheet I began the bring in the aspect of film more with the drug use theme.

(My concept sketches for the letters 'J' and 'P')

I then selected my favourite 5 images and blew them up to A5 using the photocopies in the library. 

(My 5 enlarged images)

After this we were put into groups where we critiqued each other’s development work and images. I expressed my desire to use a more wider range of materials in future work as i had only varied between pens and pencil crayons. My peers were kind enough to give me a few suggestions on different media to use. They also gave me a few pointers on what they felt worked and didn't work in the pieces. For example - my elephant image was felt to be overly detailed, most people said that the head alone would be a strong enough image – the body and legs were unnecessary.

I will need to produce an A2 portrait image in black and white incorporating the two letters we had worked with. I chose the two pieces I felt worked best to represent the letter of J and P, the Elephant and the film reel. I'm feeling somewhat daunted by this task somewhat as I dislike working on a larger scale. I'm going to have to spend some time looking into ways to transfer my A5 images onto a bigger format.

Sketchbooks

We have now been introduced to Visual Language. We were given the afternoon to draw and work. In the past I've identified architecture as a weak point for me, I can't draw them well as I can't seem to focus on the smaller details and my work usually becomes something completely different to what I'm referencing. So I spent most of my time this afternoon drawing buildings and such trying to understand why.

(Insert images of building pics)

Your Initial Brief: Questionnaires and Concepts

I find I am generally a very referential illustrator; I like to see an image in front of me, then work from it – be it for inspirational use or as a source of reference. So I found this brief quite tricky at first.

We were given questionnaires  to fill out over the weekend concerning our personalities, interests etc. We were asked to swap these with another member of our illustration course. I traded questionnaires with Janin Pineda and we both spent a bit of time interviewing each other to get a better sense of each other’s answers. 

(The Information I gathered from Janin)

Following this we chose 8-10 words that came across from the interviews and set about making 64 quick conceptual images (on an A2 piece of paper) based on them. In the time given I managed to create 36 – just over half a sheet, using different tools such as biro, Sharpie, pencil and gel pen. I realise now I’d given myself rather vague words to draw such as ‘Happy’, so when were asked to create another 64 images I honed my words to make conceptualising easier. For example; ‘Happy’ became ‘Feelings’ 

(The first sheet of concept images)

This time I created 56 images – an improvement on my paltry 36 images of the last sheet. However I had still failed to complete a full sheet. I found that after a short burst of ideas my inspiration petered out – this is something I will need to work on over the course of my career – speeding up my ideas and putting them on paper.

We were told that we now had to produce an additional two sheets of 64 images (128 in total) with images that now incorporated the letters of my questionnaire partner (in my case J and P). We had until the end of the week to do these.

Induction Week Summer 10 Final Week

Following on from the critiques of our 10 (10x10cm) illustrations we spent the week of September 30th beginning the process of further developing several avenues we had created in our work thus far.

I began by looking further into my ideas for ‘Something I’ve been thinking about’. For my 10 (10x10cm) I drew a selection of images that could best represent my reading of the Sherlock Holmes Collection. I liked the possibility of drawing singular items belonging to famous characters from literature. After doing this I moved onto ‘Something I’d wore’ making several sketches of more interesting clothing I’d worn over the summer. I then began thinking of interesting foods I’d ate over the summer, ‘Something that tasted good’.

At this point we were asked to get into small groups of 5-6 people to discuss our work thus far and gather a bit of feedback. From the response of my peers I decided that my two best options to push forward with were wearing a ‘Onsie’ over the summer or eating strawberries. I began to make lists of different ways to wear a Onsie and food products that contains strawberries. To help spur my ideas on I made a few sketches around my lists both experimenting with style and technique.

(My conceptual sketches)

After a bit of thought I settled on my Onsie ideas as I felt they would be the most enjoyable to work with and was the first choice for the discussion group I had been in. So I developed my ideas further trying to use a loose inking style and a variety of media as I went along. I found that inking in this fashion wasn't yielding good results so decided to drop that for a more controlled method, resulting in stronger line-work. I also found water colours to have the most visually pleasing results.

(One of my initial ideas using pencil crayon and watercolour)

Finally I began putting my designs onto an A2 sheet. I wanted my poster to have a comic book feel to it as I thought the panelling of comics would suit this piece well, so I outlined 10 panels that would be overlapped where need by my illustrations. Once each image had been sketched out I outlined them with fine liners of varying weights before adding a touch of water colour them. I didn’t want the illustrations to get lost in colour so chose to use soft blues, reds and greens to bring my work to life.

(My final A2 piece)

At the end of the week we put our pieces up on the wall and let each other view what we’d accomplished. Although I am happy with my finished piece I believe I didn't push the humour or eccentric ideas as far as I could have. I also feel that I could have worked on the positioning of several of my figures to make the piece as a whole flow better. However I am very happy with several of my illustrations, in particular the ones that drastically broke out of the panelling.