Exercise Visual Distortion

To begin this exercise I first read over the project info, this goes through what visual distortion is and how it is achieved. Visual distortion aims to draw attention to aspects of the image which are considered important. Distortion can be used to create work for a particular market or through informed drawing. One thing I believe this exercise will help with is to help me find my particular style as a creative. I do enjoy creating collages and would love to get better at it and make more insightful and meaningful versions.

The first thing this exercise got me to do was to draw a cat or a dog.

I was contemplating using my iPad to create the image, but instead, I decided to take on the challenge with just pencil and paper. I used a selection of pencils ranging from 2B - 8B, this was to achieve the different levels of shading. One thing I feel I did not manage to capture with this drawing was the expression of the dog, it kind of all felt merged into one and looked slightly muddy. I was however impressed with the overall look. I do not feel that drawing from life is my strongest point, that is why I enjoyed the 2nd phase of the exercise which was to take the drawing and re-create it with only 5 lines. What I did was first try and get the whole body in and try and replicate the image however what I soon found was that I could not get a full continuous line going on and it always ended up being over 5 lines, I did, however, get the idea to turn him into a Pharoh.

I then thought I would practice some more, even though I was happy with the previous page of efforts, I just wanted to push it that little further, I was aiming to create continuous lines, this is a huge trend at the moment for example in the image below.

I am a big fan of the non-conformity of this image its super out there and feels fun and wacky. It was images like this that I thought of when I first created my dog with 5 lines or less. Because I never have any magazines or newspapers in the house, I used google to find some interesting surreal textures. I aimed to explore how dogs have such loyalty and feel so at home when around you. Dogs love their home and the people in it.

I then created a collage in photoshop, I used the textures of a house, Brick and roof tiles, I kind of think this reflects quite well, basically, the head is the house and then the ears are the tiles. I also included some super cute puppy eyes and then added on the line between the eye, I think this works well for expression.

I then went back into my sketchbook to create an illustrated version of my college. I added the basic textures from my digital collage and used varied fine liner thicknesses. My initial thought after drawing it was that it lacked the detail of the collage piece and I could not achieve that with just a fine liner. However, this was to just establish the direction of my illustration. What I realised was that I was not adding much surrealism, what I was adding was just texture to my original drawing apart from the twigs as whiskers.

I then kept trying to refine the image, I just adjusted the shape of the ears, just from a glance I felt the ears just didn't sit naturally it felt quite static. I changed the ears to flow better.

I wanted to push this illustration further, I did not want to just think the image was plain without doing something about it. My original concept was to create the idea of a house through textures. So what I did to develop the idea was start to add more physical elements from the house. I felt this was closer to 'surrealism' and definitely more distorted. As I was drawing this out I had the idea of a real-world application. I would have the illustration on the poster for a dog shelter, the strapline would be "Make a dog part of your home" this would tie into the illustration so well as the dog is literally part of the home.

I then went to my ipad to illustrate this piece, I feel like with my ipad I can create a more polished and professional piece.

This was the final illustration I produced in Procreate, I'm over the moon with it, I feel like I have found an art style that really works for me, I love adding texture to my drawings and I used two charcoal brushes to get this effect. I love the quirkiness of the illustration and how it still retains the original idea, in my opinion, it still resembles a dog but I have distorted the image to add a new layer. I also felt like I needed to create a stronger character I felt like my digital collage did not sell the idea it was meant to be a house, looking back it kind of just looked like some bricks. 

The last part of the exercise was to then incorporate the illustration into a bigger image, I feel like for this step I wanted to further expand on my Pet Shelter idea, it may not be the direction the exercise would like me to go but I feel I have added a lot to my illustration already and one more element could cause it to be too crowded. However, add the illustration to a poster with text would be adding a new element in and would also further my narrative of "Make a Dog part of your home".

This is by no means a finished product but I just played around with a poster concept and some typography, I edited the M in Home so he middle bit was flipped over to resemble the roof of a house.

What went well?

I feel this exercise took me by surprise, I thought that this would not be an exercise I would enjoy but ultimately I have come out of it having really learned a new process. Surrealism definitely excites me a lot and allows me to be my most creative.

What did I learn?

A big thing that I learnt throughout this exercise was the process of distorting an image itself, I do love college art and surrealism and enjoyed seeing how far you can push an image.


What could I have done better?

I feel there wasn't something big that I thought I could've improved on, the only thing I would put down here was to maybe practice drawing out more dogs, I did make a small effort but maybe this could've helped me to get some practice in. The other thing that stood out to me when colouring was that I did not use a colour palette and I was eyeballing the colours, I did go through a lot of browns before deciding.