Category: Assignments

For the final assignment I need to illustrate around the title Seven days. The interpretation of the title and what to create is up to me.

I figured it would make sense to go with an area of illustration that most interests me and something I hope to specialise in as a future career path. That would involve concept art and character design.

I began the brainstorming process. I wanted to be sure to at least try to develop a few different ideas.

I came up with ideas like taking a single location and drawing it as it changes over seven days, or doing seven postcards of alien planets. I also thought that I wanted to include an element of character design and started coming up with a few different characters.

One of the ideas I was drawn to was doing seven snapshots of different parts of a hero’s journey, like a traditional video game level progression. Something like forest -> ice world -> fire world etc. I liked the idea of world building using concept art for different fantasy locations.

I spent some time coming up with outlines for seven locations.

 

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At this point I wanted to go through my research for the assignment. Throughout the course I showed a lot of the different comics and art books that I love to use for reference, and I thought this would be a good time to go through them again. I didn’t see value in going through each one individually, but I did make a sort of digital collage of the books that I was leafing through while I was brainstorming, all of which are referenced below.

 

I also looked online for some of my favourite concept artists.

I’ve always loved the concept art of Ralph McQuarrie, famous for coming up with many of the designs in the original Star Wars trilogy (a gallery of his works can be found here). One of the things I like about his work is how he inserts figures to create an impressive sense of scale, and allows the viewer to insert themself into the world he’s created.

 

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I decided that I was going to do seven paintings, sort of representing a loose narrative but more importantly developing and building a fantasy world. I went about drawing my thumbnails for each locale. I also wanted to include figures to contextualise the locations and introduce a bit of a story element.

When I usually do a drawing, I can easily spend upwards of 10 hours working on it, and it just wouldn’t be realistic to spend 70 hours on the artwork alone for this exercise. I decided I would challenge myself to try and complete each painting within an hour. Hopefully this isn’t seen as a cop-out! Because it’s still a large amount of work including prep, and I figured that the purpose of real concept art isn’t always to be highly rendered or in a very finished state, but often more of a loose visual or indication of what direction something might go. I decided to work digitally and work in a standard poster format, A3.

Being the final assignment, I wanted to introduce a new element to it that I hadn’t done in any of the other exercise. So since I was going to be experimenting with speedpainting, I thought I might as well record it so that I could demonstrate my process. I’ve never done this before, so it did take a bit of time to get the right programs and figure out what needed to be done!

Here is the timelapse video uploaded to YouTube:

 

I thought some of the paintings were more successful than others. I’m not very experienced with landscapes in general but I enjoyed the process. Here are all the finished pieces.

One area I found really challenging was incorporating the figures into the compositions. It was difficult to get the size right, and also to portray them without clashing with the other elements. I’m used to drawing figures in much more detail, so keeping them suitably minimal, and choosing colours that complement the overall piece was pretty tough. I think it’s something that comes with more experience. Some of the pieces were definitely better in this department than others.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the body of work I created for this exercise. I think it represents the kind of work I’d like to do as a working artist. I found this a very rewarding exercise.

 

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References

Dark Souls: Design Works. (2012) Japan: Kadokawa.

McDonnell, C. (2014). Adventure Time: The Art of Ooo. London: Titan Books.

Mignola, M. Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories Volume 1. China: Dark Horse, 2018.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Creating a Champion. (2017) USA: Dark Horse.

Shinkawa, Y. (2018) The Art of Metal Gear Solid I-IV. China: Dark Horse.

I struggled a bit with this assignment. To be honest I’ve usually found still lifes boring, but I know it’s an area I need to work on in order to improve as an artist so I was eager to tackle the assignment.

I spent some time thinking about what theme to choose. I found them all a bit challenging. In the end I chose discovery. I’ve been watching a lot of re-runs of the reality TV show Survivor recently and I guess the props from that show influenced my decision. I came up with doing a still life with some objects like a key, a compass, a map… hopefully all of these would coalesce into the theme.

I collected items that I could find that I felt appropriate and started playing with composition. The process I used was the same from the exercise on viewpoints, but I allowed myself to move around the objects as I went, searching for an effective layout.

The items I ended up with were a key, a pocket watch that I was going to pretend to be a compass, a small lantern, a glass bottle with a message inside, and a decorative shell. I decided I could draw in a map at the base afterwards.

I tried a few thumbnail sketches to try and get an even better sense of what composition would work.

Next, working at A3, I did a detailed drawing of my setup.

The perspective is off in places and I’m not 100% sure about the composition I settled on. Although I do think there is potential in the items that I’ve collected, I think they adhere to the theme pretty well.

I think the way the items build toward the theme is pretty compelling. The key in the foreground I think is best suited to be the centerpiece of the arrangement.

I didn’t have my scanner or printer handy, so I just tried to copy my sketch as best I could and prepare to do a tonal version. I wasn’t quite sure what I needed to do here, but I thought to get a good representation of tone, I would just use one colour of paint and try to recreate the still life.

Throughout all of these exercises I tried to keep my representations relatively loose and allow myself to get a little messy with it. I liked the idea of “discovering” the meaning of the illustration, first through an expressive representation and then through piecing together the meaning of the objects. I think the tonal version is pretty interesting but I was looking forward to developing it further.

Next I needed to create a line visual to set the basis for my finished piece.

I used a dip pen on cold press paper to do the line drawing. I think after a few iterations I was getting a better sense of how to subtly move the objects to make a better composition. I think the introduction of the map really helps to tie the whole image together.

I decided to finish the piece with watercolours. I felt like they’re a very naturally expressive medium and complement ink line drawings very nicely. They also contribute to what I’m going for, of moving the image slightly towards abstraction to encourage the viewer to kind of search for the meaning. I thought the lines would help to keep the drawing representative and keep the items distinguishable.

I’m not in love with the result. I think overall the colour choices are pretty poor. Everything kind blends into very neutral colours. This is why I have trouble with still lifes in watercolour in general.

I thought that rather than leave the assignment on a bum note, I would have another go at producing a finished illustration.

I decided to work digitally and experiment with a style that I’ve worked a little bit with in the past.

I found this video very interesting, the second portrait really. I notice in my own work as I work towards developing a unique style, I tend to really like harsh angles, straight lines and distinct geometry. I wanted to try and do my still life in this style. I thought that it would be a more faithful exploration of trying to develop a personal style and doing something a little interesting and unique.

The idea is to digitally paint using only the geometric selection tool. You build up different layers of shapes using different blending modes. The shapes don’t necessarily conform logically to what you’re trying to represent. They just contribute to making something graphic and fun.

I’ve experimented with the style before here, which I did earlier in the year.

Here’s the timeline of my digital illustration.

I started off with a line drawing.

Then I started filling in the colours. The layers that I used were a normal layer, a layer with soft light blending, overlay and one with multiply.

Next I continued to develop the image with colours.

Once I had gotten the image this far, the fun part! I removed the layer with the line art.

The result is something very punchy and fun. I made some finishing touches and played around a little bit with some colour correction.

I really like this piece. I hope that the theme has been successfully conveyed, and that removing linework and representing the entire image with overlapping geometric shapes creates something compelling. I’m glad I decided to keep working after completing the watercolour piece.

The last step was to create my finished poster. I decided to do it digitally because I wanted to be really experimental with laying bright colours over a black background which can be difficult to accomplish working traditionally, and just technical limitations that my scanner only works at A4, and I needed to produce the poster at A3.

While working on the poster, I flattened the image without thinking when I was working on the text so I accidentally lost my layer information, so I can’t showcase my process as I went along. But here is the finished poster, with accompanying text. I just made up a date and venue.

I had a lot of difficulty throughout. I struggled to get the line art to work with the colouring that I was going for, and I really struggled with composition. You can see I moved the pianist from one side to the other, which I think improves the overall flow. I like the essence of the poster, I think it’s eye-catching from a distance and I like the colours and composition. I just think the overall delivery, the challenge of working where some parts are drawn in negative and others aren’t, the complicated light and shade which doesn’t necessarily adhere to any given light source… It all could do with better delivery.

Reflecting on notes for the future, I think I took on too many experimental areas at once.

Before I sign off I wanted to do one quick thing. It being a poster I wanted to see a physical version of it, and I thought it would be a nice way to close off this section. I went to a copy shop and got it printed out in A3.

For this section of the assignment I needed to make some mock-ups in preparation for my final artwork.

The first line visual I did was of a saxophonist with this vertical strip coming down with a woman at a mic stand. I thought that there was potential with this idea based on the thumbnail I had done earlier.

I’m not crazy about the design. I feel like the movement of the piece is broken up in an unappealing way by the vertical strip. Maybe there’s a way to get it to work but I wasn’t seeing it.

The second design was a broader ensemble piece. I had a few of these thumbnails to choose from.

I thought this one had potential. I wanted the figures to just be slightly moved around a bit. With this piece I felt like the colour choices would be crucial. It was hard for me to visualise what the coloured version would look like.

In preparation for the colour visual I cut strips of tracing paper and copied each of the characters so that I could just move them a little bit here and there to tidy up the image.

Based on the moodboard earlier I decided on using a cyan/magenta combination. In the final piece I wanted the background to be black, but for the purposes of the colour visual I left it white. I just used markers to give an impression of what I wanted.

I wrote a few notes on the sheet. I think the left figure is now standing out too much from the rest, but it’s difficult to tell. I had a pretty good idea of what combinations I wanted now. The idea was to kind of do the central figure in negative.

The last step was to do the final artwork.

Part three’s assignment has me making a poster for a music event. Out of the options available I chose a Jazz evening.

Taking a lesson from the exercise on abstract art, I made a playlist of some of my favourite jazz albums to listen to while I worked through the assignment.

One of the most useful items I came across while researching this assignment is a book I found in my local library (which is becoming quite a treasure trove for the course), The Power of the Poster, besides having several examples of beautiful posters that served as great inspiration, it also explained a lot about the history of the poster as a commercial and artistic medium. Here are some of my favourite illustrations from the book.

I love the loose hand drawn line work and composition of the Supremes’ poster. The stark contrasting colours for the Copenhagen jazz festival are very effective.

I did several Google image searches for different jazz posters and found some really fantastic results. I bookmarked some of my favourites to use for inspiration.

I brainstormed some ideas in the form of a spider diagram and some loose written notes for what I wanted to do for my poster.

At this stage I came up with what I thought was an interesting idea. A few years ago I went to a jazz bar in Madrid, and it was a really lovely holiday. For whatever reason I have this very strong visual memory of looking up at the stage and watching the band play. In front of the stage was a mirrored column, and in the column I could see this woman sitting at the bar watching the band. I just found that moment to be a really pleasing composition, with the stage split up by this woman who had been inserted into my view. Anyway, I wanted to see if I could come up with a poster reminiscent of this memory, just to make it a bit more personal.

Next I wanted to gather reference images of some of my favourite musicians. At this stage the direction I wanted to go was slowly taking form, and I started separating my references into groups. I matched like images and printed some out, and then made some colour swatches and fabric cuttings. I pasted them to some black sugar paper to create a moodboard. I decided on the colour combinations I wanted and separated them on the board to see how they worked.

There was a few different musicians and movements I was considering. One thing I really enjoy, and am constantly ranting about whenever I get the chance, is Japanese jazz. There’s a lot of Japanese jazz musicians I really love, but especially Hiromi Uehara, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Indigo Jam Unit. As the story goes, the Japanese began to develop an interest in jazz after WWII, but early attempts at emulation were sort of dismissed as uninspired and derivative on the world stage. Out of a genuine love of the genre and a strong desire for respect from their contemporaries, an incredibly vibrant and experimental jazz scene exploded in Japan. Here’s an interview conducted by the University of Michigan of acclaimed pianist and band leader Toshiko Akiyoshi on becoming a jazz musician.

I was ready to start developing the ideas that I had, so I started some thumbnail work in my sketchbook. It was fun to combine some of my favourite jazz musicians in the same composition.

One of my ideas was to do a portrait of Akiyoshi in ink, however I thought the idea was a bit simple and wouldn’t necessarily convey jazz evening to a passerby. One of the things I’ve noticed that I’ve been gravitating towards is these sort of complicated ensemble arrangements (see the exercise on image development). I wanted to try and do something like this myself from scratch, especially since concept art is an avenue of art I’d like to go down in my future career. I wanted an arrangement of musicians, kind of cascading down the image, bifurcated by this piercing image of a female lead singer. This is what I tried to portray in my thumbnails.

It was really challenging to get it right, with so many elements that all need to coalesce into one composition. Choosing my two favourite thumbnails I got to work making my line visuals.

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References

Timmers, M. (1998) The Power of the Poster. UK: Butler and Tanner.

In reconsidering how to do the creating part of this assignment, I realised I didn’t want to feel constrained by overly narrow thinking. Maybe the dichotomy I had presented to either do the assignment traditionally or digitally was a bit limiting. I decided to paint my references in watercolour and see where the next step of the process took me, whether that involved creating a finished piece, incorporating some digital manipulation, or simply using my paintings as another form of visual reference for my final displays.

I started my paintings and was pleasantly surprised with the results, I particular like how the strawberries came out.

Next I tried to do a digital painting. It didn’t go well. Actually I expected the watercolours to be a failed experiment and to fall back on digital work, but the inverse turned out to be true. After a certain point I gave up rendering and realised these pieces weren’t going to suddenly start looking amazing and overtake my watercolour paintings. Here’s my abandoned digital creations for posterity.

At this point, I really liked how the strawberries came out, but was a little disappointed with the squash in comparison. In reading back over the assignment text I was struck by one part where it says that poor colour choices can lead to food looking unappetising. I felt a bit silly, thinking about a butternut squash and what makes it visually appealing, and it certainly isn’t the bumpy, beige outer skin. I cut the squash open to reveal the bright orange inside and tried painting it again. I’m much happier with this rendition. Ultimately I still think the strawberries turned out better, but I’m glad I took the time to study what went wrong with the squash and have another go at it.

Happy enough with the results, I scanned in my two paintings and got to work on adding a textual element.

One thing I wanted to do now that I had my images on my computer was desaturate them and look at them as black and white images. This showed interesting results and made it very clear why the strawberries are a more successful painting. I tried to do some photo correction to make the pictures more appealing, and will certainly repeat this experiment in the future to check for effective contrast and value choices in my artwork.

 

After doing some minor adjustments I started adding text. I know that changing fonts mid sentence is considered a faux-pas, but I thought it looked good, so I kept it. I tried to arrange the text in as pleasing a way as possible. Feeling that the visual impact was a little basic, I locked the text layer and painted over it with little lightening strokes, trying to give it a kind of metallic, embossed look, really pursuing that “quality” angle.

Here are the final pieces:

In reflecting on this assignment, I definitely feel like I’ve already made good progress as a visual artist since starting the course. Beforehand I probably would have just gone straight to the drawing with this assignment, but I think having the tools to approach a brief in a more deliberate way is very valuable and produces better work. I’m quite happy with the final pieces, creating something that is quite far away from what my original vision was, but allowing the creative process to bring me in a different unexpected direction.

Going into this assignment I tried to latch onto the ideas of consolidating the skills learned so far in this course. I wanted to incorporate several of the techniques dealt with in the previous exercises. I made a list of the tools I wanted to utilize:

• Making a spider diagram
• Doing research
• Drawing from observation
• Making colouristic and textural decisions
• Using black and white/contrast

I’m going to go back to this list several times as I progress with my drawing.

To set things off, I did a spider diagram.

In evoking “quality” in accordance with the brief, I decided on approaching the illustration in a very painterly way. I wanted to emulate something that would be produced in a fine art atelier.

Confident in the direction I wanted to take, I took to pinterest and made a board of reference images. I really love this board, and some of the images I found I think are really fantastic, and I couldn’t think of a better way to evoke quality in doing an illustration. My inital idea was to do something that looks like an oil painting, but looking on pinterest I was more taken with working digitally or using watercolour.

https://pin.it/k3pqtsvsdl3e4u

I made some notes on how I wanted to approach the display. I weighed up the pros and cons of working traditionally or digitally. I noted the advantages of traditional painting, thinking it would make my work more expressive and naturalistic, and making it easier to draw directly from observation. However I will definitely want to do some image correction and typography on my computer, and scanning a painting will diminish the effect and quality. Doing the work digitally will allow me to play around with interesting textures, compositions and brush sets, but it won’t look as natural and it is harder to translate an observational drawing to digital. It’s also easier to print a digital creation.

I also looked at whether to do a single piece or a bundle or collection of fruits and vegetables. Noting the challenges in composition and out-of-season procurement when it comes to multiple items. I also felt that focusing on one item would evoke a feeling of quality, inspired by images like this: https://pin.it/ryzdockaxghijf

I wrote out a list of seasonal fruits and vegetables for both Summer and Autumn. For me the produce that I most associate with coming into season in Summer would be strawberries. For Autumn it would be root vegetables, or something like pumpkin or squash. One thing I really wanted to focus on for this exercise is colour theory. In approaching the assignment I was reminded of some reading I did recently on Van Gogh and his excellent and fairly radical use of complementary colours. This short article provides some good information. http://www.vangoghsstudiopractice.com/2011/05/the-effect-of-colour/

I did a little refresher on some basic colour theory, some info here: http://www.poeticmind.co.uk/research/rgb-cmyk-colour-systems/

One of my favourite Van Gogh paintings is The Night Café, https://www.vincentvangogh.org/the-night-cafe.jsp

In a letter to his brother Theo, he wrote of the painting:

I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four lemon-yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most alien reds and greens, in the figures of little sleeping hooligans, in the empty dreary room, in violet and blue. The blood-red and the yellow-green of the billiard table, for instance, contrast with the soft tender Louis XV green of the counter, on which there is a rose nosegay. The white clothes of the landlord, watchful in a corner of that furnace, turn lemon-yellow, or pale luminous green.

It’s a beautiful and deliberate use of colour.

In thinking about colours for my project, I thought about what colours I most associate with the respective season, and what colour works as its complement. Using the red strawberries, I wanted to utlize green in the drawing, and using an orange or earthy vegetable for Autumn, I wanted to incorporate blue. Not only do the pieces themselves utilize complementary colours, but I’m hoping that the pieces will also complement each other.

My next step was to procure the produce for my observational drawings. I made sure to keep an eye out for in store point of sale displays for any spontaneous inspiration. I went to my local fruit and veg shop and picked up the best pieces I could find for the assignment.

There were a few minor sales displays, but they had only very simple black pumpkin outlines for Halloween. I ended up buying a butternut squash for the Autumn display, and a punnet of strawberries for Summer.

At this stage I was fairly confident with moving on to the drawing section of the assignment.

 

 

It’s time to print my linocuts! First I set up everything. I prepared a small sheet of glass to spread the ink, a special roller, various sheets of scrap paper, and a spoon to help with the transfer.

I went with a very thick watercolour paper for my card surface. It’s not labelled, but if my memory serves it’s 300lb hot press Fabriano paper. I had an idea to use black paper as card stock, to just add a little something to the final presentation.

I cut out three sheets from the watercolour paper to make the printing surfaces.

I made a mistake lining out where I wanted to cut, but eh.

Right. Now for the fun part. Everything set up.

Ink.

Press press press.

Moment of truth!

Well. Parts of it didn’t transfer properly, but I’m happy with it. It turned out better than expected. I particularly like the rolling clouds. I think the foreground looks a little unclear, maybe more like ocean that plains of rock.

Okay, onto the other elements, and… Oh no…

Just before I pressed this stamp onto the page I suddenly realised… it’s going to be printed in reverse, isn’t it…

I hope my laziness will be excused for not buying another sheet of linoleum just to fix this one detail. I considered printing it anyway, for comic effect. In the end I decided I will just write in the word Hello myself, after I’ve finished with the other elements.

These all turned out pretty legible, although I should have cut deeper grooves into the raised fist, something that occured to me as I was doing it. The little art supplies, paint brush and pens, could have been placed more thoughtfully, I feel like they’re messing up the composition a bit. But I like it! It’s very me.

My silhouette also didn’t transfer very well. I decided to cheat a little and recitify that with a paint brush.

And I wrote on the top of that sheet with my ink brush. I tried to do it in a way that it didn’t clash with the lino elements. I think it turned out all right.

Now to glue my sheets to the makeshift card stock.

Pritt stick!

Glue glue glue.

And finished!

Here is the final card:

In the end a lot of things didn’t go according to plan but I’m glad I challenged myself to go for something I wouldn’t normally do. I enjoyed the process and I’m pretty happy with the result, even if it is a little rough around the edges.

Next I got started cutting the design into the linoleum. I’ve done this a couple of times before, but not enough to feel comfortable doing it.

 

Finished!

Next I started working on elements that would go on the inside of the card. I had the idea to make a number of small images that represent some of my different interests. I’d then cut around them and fix something to the rear of the linoleum sheet to turn them into custom stamps.

I drew the templates straight onto the lino sheet and started cutting again.

I tried my best to keep the designs large without too many details, but some of them still ended up quite difficult to cut around.

Finally I started cutting out the pieces for my stamps. I cut around the lino shapes with a scissors, and affixed little pieces of thick corrugated cardboard to the back with double sided tape.

Next up: printing and finishing touches!

For the first assignment I need to make a greeting card for my tutor. The card needs to include some details about myself, including interests, hobbies, and aspirations. The first step is to do some brainstorming, so I took my notepad and jotted down some ideas.

My first ideas were geared towards using the materials I’m most experienced with, watercolour or digital work, and portraiture. I personally found the idea of using a self portrait to represent myself a bit… literal. Eventually I got drawn to a particular image, a sort of silhouette of myself reading, accompanied by my two cats. The idea of using a silhouette was intrigueing, and I thought the fact that the assignment is a greeting card meant it would be pretty cool to do something with printmaking. I’ve tried to do a handful of linocuts before, and I’ve always enjoyed the process. I felt like the graphic nature, and the interesting textures that go with lino would be great with a physical card needed for the assignment.

I did have a problem in that I’m not strictly comfortable doing a linocut. But I feel like using unexpected materials and doing everything the hard way is a very me thing to do, so I think the resulting process represents me quite well!

I thought of doing the whole card with different linocuts, using different sets of images to accomplish the brief. Thinking about illustration as a concept, I wondered what kind of words should be included in the card. Should I write a letter in the card? Or include a spider diagram of words that I think represent myself? I don’t think I’m very good at talking about myself, and not hugely comfortable with words. I read over the wording of the assignment again and latched onto the title. “Say hello“. I thought it would be really nice aesthetically to open the card and just have that, “hello”, written on it, surrounded by different images relating to my interests and hobbies.

I had a lot of trouble working on the composition for the final piece. Eventually I moved away from using the reading silhouette for the front cover, feeling like there was too much empty space, and thought it was better suited for the inside of the card. Sort of revealing what I’m like on the inside.

After a bit of thought, I decided on going for a landscape on the front cover. I was inspired by looking through some online galleries of woodcuts and other prints. I recently took some photographs of a nearby geographic region, The Burren, which I’ve always felt has a really beautiful and totally unique landscape, and is so close to home it would be the perfect image for a greeting card.

Here was some inspiration for how I approached drawing my landscape: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/rural-landscape-woodcut-gary-hincks.html

I inked a sketch based off of a photo I took, and did it to A5 size in preparation for a template I would use for the linocut.

I made a quick visit to my wonderful local artshop and bought two sheets of linoleum and a sheet of tracing paper. I used a 2B mechanical pencil to transfer my drawing to the tracing paper.

I layed the tracing paper over the linoleum. I rubbed a spoon over the back of the page to transfer the drawing to the lino.

And… Oh dear. Well that could have turned out better.

In the future I suppose I’ll try using a softer pencil and do bolder lines. Not to worry. I took a pen and tried to restore the image a bit.

This isn’t quite going according to plan, but that’s all part of the art experience!

Next up: Cutting out the design!