Exercise: Turning words into pictures
Exercise: Turning words into pictures
It went over the idea that the first part of any brief is to get ideas down quickly and effectively and not to worry about the aesthetic of them. This is an idea I have been familiar with for a while now and this is the direction I like to take my sketching anyway.
The first word out of the selection I chose was 'exotic'. I think that word can refer to a large number of things and I explored those. The first things that came to my mind were animals and a large number of vibrant 'exotic' colours that are associated with them. Everything that came to my mind were pictures, I could see the wings of exotic parrots and butterflies and the skin of dragon fruits and mangoes. I then went on to draw cars, flowers and exotic islands. I think subconsciously I tried to include details of the objects I was drawing, I had a large idea in my mind of what they should look like but not the whole thing, it was not a crystal clear image. It was quite a lot of smaller ideas, for example, when I thought of the dragon fruit I couldn't sit there and from memory draw out a dragon fruit however I could picture the spiky leaves attached to it. When I draw the car I imagined the front view with sharp accent lines. Because I was trying to portray those as drawings and get them fast on paper I ended up exaggerating details.
Just to breakdown a few of the more specific drawings, in the top corner you can see I tried to draw some textures and colours that came to mind, scales, feathers and spots, next to the scales on the far right, I tried to represent the adjective slimy, If you can't make it out, it's supposed to be a hand full of gooey slime and it all dripping of the hand. In the bottom left-hand corner, I tried to sum up the idea of rarity, the arrow is pointing to the single gold ball next to a pile of plain white balls, this to me sums it up and is a perfect way of sketching down that idea to come back to later.
Part of the exercise was to recognise scenes within the word if the word sums up one. When I really thought about the word exotic I was taken to an exotic forest full of plants and animals. I wanted to create the feeling of enclosure that a forest gives you quickly, I created a path that narrowed into the distance with trees bending over to close off the sky. I then drew a few animals and plants to compliment this scene, going back to the idea of imaging smaller details though, when I drew the snake, instead of picturing the snake in my mind I just pictured it wrapped around a tree, I couldn't see the face or the details on the snake I could just imagine something wrapped around a tree, at this point I knew it was a snake but I couldn't see one. This was just a quick sketch but If I was to then go and properly illustrate this then I could, not just because I quickly sketched out the trees and plants but because I sketched out this idea of how the scene should look and be framed.
I wanted to challenge myself a little further, when reading the choice of words childhood was the one that I really stayed away from, I think often I gage choice of my initial ideas that come to my mind, when I read exotic I pictured parrots and flowers but when I read childhood my head didn't flood with tons of images, don't get me wrong I had a fantastic childhood and thought of a few things but I knew this was going to be more of a challenge. However, this is just another way of saying I was picking the easier option.
So after completing the mind map for exotic, I gave childhood ago. The whole thing was very subjective to my childhood and my experiences. Because of the fact I had to think harder, I created some more less obvious sketches, these were mainly visual metaphors to describe adjectives.
Its a phrase that is thrown around quite regularly but In my opinion works well, "Life was simpler", however cheesy it is, life was simpler when I was a child, I just didn't know it. I tried to sketch that out at the bottom of the page. This sketch is me walking from school to home and then back again, this was my routine throughout almost all my childhood, apart from the odd piece of homework a lot of what I did at school didn't carry back into my home, and that was perfect, I could get home a just chill out and play Runescape ( my favourite game!!). Occasionally I went into Nottingham with my friends on the train and out with my family at the weekends, but apart from that, this was my cycle. Another thing this represented to me was the idea of a sanctuary, I always had a loving home I could go back to, as a child maybe took this for granted, but I'm very grateful for it now.
These small drawings are supposed to represent this idea further. It was the idea of structure, because of this 'simpler life' I had a structured routine ( hence the brick wall) and everything fitted together without little complications.
I think repeating this task did help me slightly to further my skills, In the childhood one, I think I challenged myself further to produce adjectives and ideas into tangible drawings.
This exercise started with a breakdown of how the brain works, the left side of the brain is your verbal and rational side, It reduces its thoughts to numbers, letters and words and thinks serially. The right side is your non-verbal and intuitive brain. It thinks in patterns or pictures. The aim of this exercise was to suggest a new way of brainstorming, I've recently just completed an exercise based around written spider diagrams and this exercise challenges that. Drawing on the right side of the brain is a book published by Betty Edwards in 1979, she believed that drawing helps to reach beyond what may be reached through investigation. In my opinion, this is a more one method isn't superior than the other, when I look back at my previous sketchbook pages, I use a mixture of both small quick drawings and written words. I think these two methods work best together in harmony.
It went over the idea that the first part of any brief is to get ideas down quickly and effectively and not to worry about the aesthetic of them. This is an idea I have been familiar with for a while now and this is the direction I like to take my sketching anyway.
The first word out of the selection I chose was 'exotic'. I think that word can refer to a large number of things and I explored those. The first things that came to my mind were animals and a large number of vibrant 'exotic' colours that are associated with them. Everything that came to my mind were pictures, I could see the wings of exotic parrots and butterflies and the skin of dragon fruits and mangoes. I then went on to draw cars, flowers and exotic islands. I think subconsciously I tried to include details of the objects I was drawing, I had a large idea in my mind of what they should look like but not the whole thing, it was not a crystal clear image. It was quite a lot of smaller ideas, for example, when I thought of the dragon fruit I couldn't sit there and from memory draw out a dragon fruit however I could picture the spiky leaves attached to it. When I draw the car I imagined the front view with sharp accent lines. Because I was trying to portray those as drawings and get them fast on paper I ended up exaggerating details.
Just to breakdown a few of the more specific drawings, in the top corner you can see I tried to draw some textures and colours that came to mind, scales, feathers and spots, next to the scales on the far right, I tried to represent the adjective slimy, If you can't make it out, it's supposed to be a hand full of gooey slime and it all dripping of the hand. In the bottom left-hand corner, I tried to sum up the idea of rarity, the arrow is pointing to the single gold ball next to a pile of plain white balls, this to me sums it up and is a perfect way of sketching down that idea to come back to later.
Part of the exercise was to recognise scenes within the word if the word sums up one. When I really thought about the word exotic I was taken to an exotic forest full of plants and animals. I wanted to create the feeling of enclosure that a forest gives you quickly, I created a path that narrowed into the distance with trees bending over to close off the sky. I then drew a few animals and plants to compliment this scene, going back to the idea of imaging smaller details though, when I drew the snake, instead of picturing the snake in my mind I just pictured it wrapped around a tree, I couldn't see the face or the details on the snake I could just imagine something wrapped around a tree, at this point I knew it was a snake but I couldn't see one. This was just a quick sketch but If I was to then go and properly illustrate this then I could, not just because I quickly sketched out the trees and plants but because I sketched out this idea of how the scene should look and be framed.
I wanted to challenge myself a little further, when reading the choice of words childhood was the one that I really stayed away from, I think often I gage choice of my initial ideas that come to my mind, when I read exotic I pictured parrots and flowers but when I read childhood my head didn't flood with tons of images, don't get me wrong I had a fantastic childhood and thought of a few things but I knew this was going to be more of a challenge. However, this is just another way of saying I was picking the easier option.
So after completing the mind map for exotic, I gave childhood ago. The whole thing was very subjective to my childhood and my experiences. Because of the fact I had to think harder, I created some more less obvious sketches, these were mainly visual metaphors to describe adjectives.
Its a phrase that is thrown around quite regularly but In my opinion works well, "Life was simpler", however cheesy it is, life was simpler when I was a child, I just didn't know it. I tried to sketch that out at the bottom of the page. This sketch is me walking from school to home and then back again, this was my routine throughout almost all my childhood, apart from the odd piece of homework a lot of what I did at school didn't carry back into my home, and that was perfect, I could get home a just chill out and play Runescape ( my favourite game!!). Occasionally I went into Nottingham with my friends on the train and out with my family at the weekends, but apart from that, this was my cycle. Another thing this represented to me was the idea of a sanctuary, I always had a loving home I could go back to, as a child maybe took this for granted, but I'm very grateful for it now.
These small drawings are supposed to represent this idea further. It was the idea of structure, because of this 'simpler life' I had a structured routine ( hence the brick wall) and everything fitted together without little complications.
I think repeating this task did help me slightly to further my skills, In the childhood one, I think I challenged myself further to produce adjectives and ideas into tangible drawings.
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