Exercise: Identifying tools and materials

This was the first exercise of stage 4 and I wanted to go into this with a better system, I want to focus my time into improving my research and experimenting, I'm also considering what work I want to put forward for Assessment later on this year. To keep myself focussed I put together an action plan.

Action Plan

To kick this exercise off I spent some time researching many different illustrators who all use very different mediums of art, I didn't just solely focus on traditional or digital but went for a variety of both. That was the first chunk of time, it was a gathering exercise, I browsed the web for these artists I primarily used Behance and Illustrationweb.com. I found these websites extremely useful as you could set the parameters for what you wanted to search for so you could just look for Watercolour artists for example.

I then organised the artists based on name and category, that way I would be able to know which piece of artwork is from who before I used to just save whatever I wanted not taking into account where I have sourced it from and the illustrator's name.

The first area of illustration I covered was watercolour, this is something I have explored in my last assignment.

Marta: 

As a watercolour artist Marta (from what I can interpret) likes to draw fruit and vegetables, I think as a medium of art this links very well to this subject, watercolour is a bold and expressive art form, it has a real sense of immediacy, you can't really control each brush stroke as much as other paints. It also creates very vibrant colours which mix beautifully together. Another reason I believe Marta's work is successful is watercolour art seems fresh, it has the same qualities as nature because flowing water is such a natural thing when pairing that with fresh fruit it exaggerates and enhances the qualities.

I particularly like the effect of the green here, it has so much depth and her use of different shades of green really add contrast to the mint leaf, it makes it appear bold and rich.

On reflection I think this is evidence that sometimes watercolour can go wrong, I'm not saying this illustration is bad but the way the green has bled has created quite a muddy effect in the middle of the fruit, muddy and brown is the last colour you want when drawing fruit, it can make it appear rotten and mouldy, the opposite of vibrant.

Luke Scriven: One thing I love about Luke's work is the childlike innocence it possesses, Luke has used the watercolour medium to make his work light and playful, yes the work is still vibrant and colourful but I think that was the stronger outcome. I think watercolour gives off this effect as it shares some of the same qualities as a child, it is unpredictable and immediate like a child playing, the initial pigment isn't as intense and strong as let's say acrylic, I think this plays into the idea of a child's innocence.

Obviously, his physical art style and the cuteness behind the emotions of his characters play a massive part in his work. I feel that watercolour just couples so nicely with it.

This was a really interesting piece by Luke, I think he has used the physical aspects of water and its qualities to play into the scene. Within the illustration, it is raining and we also have a river, the effect of flowing water is enhanced by the watercolour.

URAN: Uran is a digital painter whom I found on Behance, I love his larger than life characterisations. I think this does pair well with his style. He has very simple and flat backgrounds with simple textures to give them some depth. Using the computer to create this work means the artwork can have a clean concise feel to it and also apply for precise shading.

I also feel that digital painting often makes it easier to add reflections and lighting to your work. Something that Uran does well. I think Uran physically exaggerates the limbs of his characters to add more playfulness too them.

Cristian: Cristian is a college artists I found on Behance, he uses a lot of photography elements to college them together. I think one thing I love about College art is that they often always have a broader and deeper meaning. They often convey a metaphor and use a lot of symbolic imagery. This image below is from a collection he did called Networking Hysteria. He goes on to say, 'Why do we need all this networking' 'Why do we have so little time today'. Social networking is sucking us in and filling our minds with the life and struggles of everyone around us. I believe Cristian has used the faces of random people to represent their opinions, so many people all flooding our mind. He has also used the buildings to convey the outside world, each window has another persons head sticking out of it. A disconnected person would just walk past the building and hear nothing, but because we are constantly connected we cannot escape the shouting and ranting, or the bragging and boasting.

The next part of the exercise wanted me to choose an image that i appreciate visually and write about it within my learning log. A style I have really grown to love is college and I think after looking at Cristian's work I have been inspired by just how important it is. As part of my graphic design course I did an exercise on Photomontages. From the feedback my tutor gave me she said it was a successful approach and it was one of the exercises I really thoroughly enjoyed. I even took this same approach when designing my assignment.

I then went onto one of my previous projects and had to recreate that illustration in this new style. I chose to recreate my subjective drawing, this was of my girlfriend's dog Phoenix. I wanted to still create something that answered the original brief. It had to convey the word 'Crazy'.

My first port of call was to start getting some ideas, as per my feedback and Action Plan I wanted to branch out and use some different methods to enhance my idea development. I started to mind map, I thought this was a really helpful exercise and once I really got going I started to have more and more branches. From this research I got the basis for my illustration, it would be on the theme of carnivals. 

From the initial word crazy I thought of abstract colours that were loud and neon. I think in terms of design these would be 'Crazy', something that is loud. I then went onto research Carnivals, I thought there is so much exciting stuff happening all around you. I also started drawing down a few ideas that came to my head when I thought of carnivals.

Google Images

I really liked the huge feather headdresses of Brazilian carnivals, they're exciting and vibrant and everyone is wearing something different. There is also a lot of diamonds and gem stones. From this I then went back to my brainstorm and added in gem stones, from this I then thought it would be really exciting to play around with light, gem stones can reflect light in all different directions. This reflects how much Phoenix darts and around.

Google Images

There is just so much energy in all the dancers.

Google Images

I then went onto drawing out some thumbnails, going off my research I wanted to play around with headdresses and feathers, I thought this would be an exciting way to tie in the concept of carnivals, a few of my ideas included having Phoenix wear a headdress, having Phoenix fur actual feathers, and using the headdresses as a background element. Ultimately I went with Phoenix wearing the headdress. I then went onto experiment with other collage elements, from my initial research I wanted to tie in speed, I drew out some Olympic runners as thumbnail concepts, I wanted to also tie in long exposure and thought this would add to the effect of speed.

I had quite a good basis to go off, I had completed quite a large amount of research and established a concept for my final illustration. After a chat with my girlfriend I went through my spider diagram with her to see what ideas she came up with, one idea she suggested that I didn't have was 'unexpected'. You will never expect what Phoenix would do next, one moment he will be looking out the window, then he will dart down stairs and chase a fly. I felt this was a really useful time just to get any final other ideas that I might not have thought of myself. 

Unexpected was definitely an element I could include inside my work. I brainstormed a few more ideas on this concept, I wanted to put in something into my illustration that related to my subject but wasn't quite expected. I decided to build on my idea of having the Olympic runners and instead combine them with carnival horses, having the carnival horses have human legs was my idea, I thought it would be comical and also very unexpected. 

As you can see within my sketchbook I have illustrated my own feather headdress using my brand new coloured pencils.

Final illustration

This was my final illustration. I feel like this whole exercise went really well, I felt like because I put more time into researching and brainstorming this really helped. This allowed me to have a solid idea of what I wanted and this level of experimentation minimised the amount of stress I usually feel just sat in front of photoshop moving the parts around. However what I feel I could improve on would be to have a really solid focus for the piece, I feel a lot of other collage artists have a more focused direction, when I was generating my ideas I wanted to just include an abundance of different elements and I feel this kind of left me confused at what I wanted to my final piece to look like the message I wanted it to give off. I did try to focus it more in the end with the idea of speed but through the idea process I just kept thinking of things to include and then thinking 'Yep Ill find a place for that'. I definitely feel I want to learn more about collage art, as much as I like these exercises I think If I want to continue developing my physical skills I need to do that in my own time.