This exercise specifically requests that it be tackled with an open mind, something my tutor informed me that I apparently excel at! So I wasn’t too worried about going through the process. Visual distortion is not something I tend to do too much of, but something I’m not afraid to try!
Firstly I was asked to draw a picture of a cat or dog. Well, I have two beautiful cats as co-habitants, so I jumped at the opportunity to draw from life. Especially being an exercise on visual distortion, I felt that drawing from life would help imbue some of the cats’ character into the drawing.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to draw a cat from life. You could say they aren’t the most cooperative animals. Eventually one the cats, Hina, curled up and fell asleep on me while I was watching television. I squirmed around a bit and managed to pull out my sketchpad without disturbing her and tried to draw her while she was sitting still for a moment. Well, I wasn’t in a very comfortable position, and I couldn’t hold the sketchpad properly without disrupting her, but I managed to pull off a sketch where everything is more or less in the right place and rendered in a way that feels relatively “real”.
Looking at it now I think it captures her charming little personality surprisingly well. I like the composition and pose, and I love that all four of her cute little white mittens are poking out.
I saw the second part of this exercise as another opportunity to redeem my attempts at distilling client visuals. It also expands on my work on the exercise from earlier in this part, identifying tools and materials. I used a soft felt tip pen to do the five-line drawing. Here’s the result.
I’m actually surprisingly really pleased with it. I think it maintains the character of the original drawing but in a very cutesy style.
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The next challenge involves collage. Well, I always run into trouble at these parts, partly because honestly I don’t really collect any magazines and the comics and art books that I do collect that represent a substantial strain on my income are definitely not suitable for mutilation. I made a trip out to my mom’s house and she kindly agreed to lend (or sacrifice?) some of her random magazines she had lying about.
I started cutting and pasting, trying not to be tied down to realistic interpretations. I really had no idea what I was doing, but I tried not to let my confusion and uncertainty get to me! One decision I did make purely for the sake of readability was to sort of group colours together in a way that made sense. I still have no idea if it reads as a cat. I’ve been staring at it too long to tell!
Anyway, next I had to render this monstrosity I’ve created. I did a few sketches for fun before doing a finished drawing.
At this stage I was finding the whole process pretty amusing, so I guess that’s good. It was taking a distinctly Pokémon-esque form. Reminding me of this crazy character.
I painted the piece with watercolours to do the colours, giving it more of an abstract edge. I liked the composition of my original sketch but I don’t think it works for this half-cat, half-bird creature. I was looking forward to see how I could develop the character.
Its name? Peacat, obviously.
Finally I had to place this chimeric, Pokémon miscreation in a larger piece. I ran with the idea of introducing a narrative so I came up with this little comic strip.
I think the character of the cat is captured pretty well and hopefully the strip is funny. I think looking back over the whole exercise, I really allowed myself to be brought on a strange unexpected journey and produce something unique and out of my comfort zone. Surprisingly I might even use some of the steps in this exercise in the future, finding it a fun way to produce some weird results.
Josh Robbins OCA Learning Log 