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.