The brief of this assignment can be summarised as:
Images for a supermarket campaign
The supermarket has a brand identity for quality
The images need to be 12x12 inches, and will be shown near to fruit and veg.
I started by not diving straight into brainstorming ideas. After the exercises of this section of the module, I had learned that research about my subject might prove useful. I had to make one illustration relate to summer, and the other to autumn.
So my first point-of-call was to research the seasonality of fruit and veg, rather than assume (and potentially fall foul of bias). I also saw it as an opportunity to promote seasonal eating, which I thought would fit into the supermarket's brand identity.
I ended up with two spider diagrams of seasonal fruit and veg. I used these diagrams to inform my family's weekly shop, to allow me to get my hands on some of the items. That way I could study them properly, not just stick to photos. Whilst I went to different supermarkets, I took the time to take photos of the points of sale, to get some familiarity about the different approaches, techniques and styles employed.
Once I had come back from the shops, I was pretty inspired, so I followed on from my spider diagrams to brainstorm ideas about the seasons themselves. I wanted to give myself lots of options to convey the sense of the seasons, and make the food in the illustration look appetising and attractive.
The next phase was to do some still life studies of the seasonal produce I had managed to buy. The irony was, that because it was winter, a lot of what I bought actually wasn't in season! But I told myself it was in the name of learning - plus I had come up with some really yummy recipes to use all the amazing produce.
I completed the studies in my sketchbook over 2-3 nights. I took a lot of time to try and observe not only the shape and character of the produce, but also their qualities (inside and out!) I really enjoyed doing this part. I also really improved my ability to get a good result from the Inktense watercolour pencils. I am especially proud of my aubergine and beetroot (it seems I can do purple well!).
Thinking about the final piece
While I was doing other things, I had composition ideas pop into my head. Every time it did I made sure to note them down on a pad (which I later transferred to my sketchbook by gluing in place.
I am trying to capture ideas more often. I have started taking a small A6 sketch/note book to work, easily accessible in a small pocket. I try and use this jot down ideas that I can follow up later in an exercise or personal project.
But now it was time to tackle the composition proper. I reflected that in my first assignment I came to an idea quickly, and didn't really play around with alternatives.
Well this time I had managed to come up with some really promising brainstorming, so I wanted to see if I could tease out some of those ideas into useful compositions. So I created 12 squares in my sketchbook, and resolved that I would fill every single one of them with an idea (good or bad!) You can see what I came up with below:
As you can see, not only did I think and thumbnail the potential compositions, but I took the time to go back over my work to reflect on each of them - you can see my notes next to the images. I was a little stuck after looking at them, nothing seemed to pop out. They all had challenges in their execution, and I really wanted the image to reflect my voice.
I took a break, and decided to go and do some research on what other illustrators have done to illustrate food. I look at other OCA students' learning logs as well as doing image searches on the web. I save what I thought could be useful in a Pinterest board; I had avoided this earlier so as to not be unduly influenced in my creative discovery.
Coming back to the thumbnails I had drawn something struck me - this needs to be part of a campaign, so they need to tie well together not just individually. It's at this point that the kite and wellington boots thumbnails started to call to me. I decided to create some roughs to see how well they worked as a pair. I went straight for the compositions in the sketch book, and in retrospect I think I would have liked to have played around with a second round of larger rough compositions to see what worked best, especially with text. (Different arrangement of the wellington boots for example)
Once I had done the roughs I was pleased, but this is where I also could have benefited from a second pass on composition options. The boots were so big that they left little room for text to sit. I was only able to do these on A3 watercolour paper, whose height is just under the 12 needed. I've watched enough elimination game-shows to know that the parameters matter! The only options were to expand the image once rendered, which could effect the quality, or to do it digitally. I had wanted to carry on the watercolour approach that I had successfully done in my sketchbook, but that would also mean taking a gamble with colour scheme (or doing extra prep to try some out).
Time was unfortunately against me, so I opted to go digital. It would significantly add onto my render time, but it would also allow my to change colours on the fly. Using Clip Studio Paint I scanned and imported the roughs. I have been concerned with was my style will be as I develop (I know I can't force it). I had watched a youtube video on the subject and the advice was actually really good. It focused more on a disciplined approach to just improving whatever your style currently is. By looking at something you want to get better at, or a technique or style you want to incorporate, you can 'steal and tweak'. Building on top of what came before to do something new and made yours.
I am consistently awed by the work of R Kikuo Johnson. I really like how his backgrounds allow the storytelling in front to take focus. The style of his backgrounds is similar in many of his pieces, but tends to not use line art, and have desaturated colours. I thought I would give this a go. For the first image (summer) I tried to put in a background in a painterly manner. It was reasonably successful but didn't have the right level of polish. Simply put, I couldn't see it in a posh supermarket.
So after trying a few different colour schemes for the kite, I decided to re-do the background. this time taking a similar technique to the one I had used for the kite, but this time not using outlines. I drew on what I had learnt in the black and white exercise to think about how I could get pretty abstract shapes to come together to tell the story and give a sense of hierarchy. I was really happy with the result.
For the autumn illustration the first thing I did was to adjust the size of the boots within the 12-inch composition. That way it left more room for the text.
I had the idea of taking walks in the woods during autumn, so I made sure to faithfully capture the autumn leaves.
This added more time, as I went to research autumn leaves! As I rendered the wellingtons, I was really happy with how I managed to add texture to the vegetables. This then allowed me to really focus on how the light would play on the wellingtons.
I brought up lots of reference photos as I worked, and paid particular attention to the specular lighting of the wellingtons, so that they really gave the sense of being plastic, shiny, and waterproof. The only thing to add was text for the final images. I researched the typography of the Waitrose rebrand, and sourced and open source font that had similar characteristics. By increasing the space between the letters I was able to get a very similar effect. The only other thing to do was to source 2 open source display fonts to use for the season names. I coloured them to add to their characteristics, and to really evoke the sense of the season they represented.
Updates & Rework
My tutor noted that having a green kite on a green background might not be the best choice, so I changed the colour of the background to be a peach colour. This does seem to work to contrast against the background, but the red fruit are now a little lost.
I experimented with other colours, the problem was, a lot of the colours had a contrast problem, or just didn't seem to fit the season (orange and purple for example). In the end I found a colour somewhat like strawberry gelato, which seemed fitting. It also seemed to address the contrast issues as it was less saturated.
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