Exercise: Using black and white

Exercise: Using black and white

When I initially read this exercise I was a very confused, I took it upon myself to spend 10 minutes just diving into other peoples responses just to get a clear image of what was expected. Once I had a better idea I began. The word I chose to explore was 'Extraordinary' For my object I chose the Eiffel tower, for two reasons. One, I'm going to Paris in April with my girlfriend, and Two it is for sure an extraordinary piece of engineering especially for its time and looked upon as one of the most iconic landmarks in history. To begin with, I gathered quite a few reference images of the Eiffel Tower.


I chose this image because it was at a front-facing angle so I wasn't working with any perspectives that would've made this exercise more challenging. I then went onto creating a light sketch of the tower just in pencil in my sketchbook.

Finished base sketch


The next step was to go over the base sketch with a thin fineliner, this would add an extra layer of black which is going to be used for the thiner areas and smaller details and would therefore, allow me then to see which elements of the tower require thicker lines.


I then went onto using a 0.7mm fineliner, at this point I began to get slightly concerned about how I was going to cut all of this out as there were large amounts of thinner areas, what I decided to do Is thicken the lines by eye. This would allow me to get much thicker lines than what I could achieve with just using the 0.7mm fineliner to outline.  Overall I'm satisfied with the final drawing, the outline is kept at near enough the same thickness throughout and there were no incidents of smudging and mistakes.


I kind of went a little off course with this next step, I don't have any black paper and the drawing I produced would be immensely fiddly to cut out. I decided that I would get exactly the same effect by using photoshop.

I took the drawing into photoshop and inverted it to create a white and black copy. I then used the curve tool to enhance the white and black to create a much bigger contrast.


Within the smaller details,  I used the magic wand tool and the pen tool to cut out precise lines. All in all, I really like the large contrast in the image, it really shifts focus to the highlight section of the tower but then at the same time shifts the focus back to the other side like a game of tennis. In my opinion, its as if the brain cannot decide which area to look at. Compared to the original line drawing this has a lot more depth and character. I really like this effect and have ideas on how to implement this into my other exercises both ones I have completed and new exercises I haven't started yet.





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