I had been dreading this exercise. On the OCA Illustration Discord, I had seen other student seek help, advice and feedback to complete this exercise. So it filled me with anticipation when it finally came around to me. On the surface this exercise didn't seem to hard, but there belied it's actual complexity. There was nowhere to hide.
There were four subjects to choose from, but I was not sure what to pick. So instead decided to draw thumbnail sketched for all four of them, and then pick the composition that I thought would work best.
This part was really enjoyable, I loved coming up with dynamic compositions. It's also when I realised how hard this would be. A lot of my compositions would work well if I was allowed a mid grey (much like the image in the coursebook by Grandfield) but the instructions explicitly wanted me to only use black and white.
My favourite composition was the one of the caves looking out towards the lighthouse, but without being about to use a grey, I felt this would be too difficult to pull off and still keep a sense of hierarchy. Instead I finally opted for the image of the woods, inspired by the journey of Red Riding Hood. This image relied on the composition and perspective to give the hierarchy, and that felt like a challenge that I could achieve.
The next part was harder than I thought; I hadn't really worked at this scale before. The instructions required me to work at A3. Instead of working small and blowing it up, I decided instead to start my line drawing at that size. Once scanned into the PC, I inverted the colours as directed. The idea, then was to cut and paste the black back into the original line work.
The problem, I found, was that because printers can't often print to the edge of paper, what you actually get out is an image slightly smaller than the original! Luckily I found this out after sticking the first piece down. To remedy this, I printed out the scanned original to work on top of, so that the sizes would match.
The collage was extremely fun, I loved moving from scissor to knife and back again, working out how to layer the shapes. It was also a little frustrating from an efficiency point-of-view. I am convinced I could have done this exercise quicker working digitally.
But then I stopped and reflected on the work.
Being inefficient meant idiosyncrasies. Times when things didn't match up perfectly. But rather than detract from the final image, I think they add depth and texture. The final piece is something I am actually very proud of.
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