Introduction
Another assignment, and overdue again! I am getting tired of things tripping up my planning and putting my schedule back. Due to a spell of ill-health, I had an initial delay of over a week. In the past, this would have not derailed me very much. However, since I lost my studio space at home I find that my plans and my time have become brittle. It does not take a lot to cause a delay, and it seems that one delay invariably causes a cascade of delays which compound each other.
This frustration tarnishes the experience and fun of the assignment, and I get so stressed about actually finishing it that it makes it harder to activate and organise. Which then delays me, I get stressed and the cycle repeats.
The Exercises
Use your learning log to reflect on the different exercises in this part of the course as preparation for your next assignment.
What have you enjoyed doing the most, or the least, and why?
Which pieces of work do you feel have been your most successful and why?
Have these exercises helped you to think about things in new ways or try out new ways of working? What have they been and how has your viewpoint changed?
If there’s one area you would like to develop further, what is it?
The exercises for this section of the module have been great, and I wish I had the luxury of time to appreciate them more. One of the biggest obstacles to getting stuff done was the nature of this section being around aspects of Reportage Illustration. By the nature of the exercises, I needed to go to places to do the work. Given how fragile my timetable is with a full-time job and not being able to work at home, this meant that any disruption to planning had a massive impact.
I really enjoyed getting back to doing more observational drawing, however, and I have done my best to try and do more of this where possible outside of my coursework. I don't think my sketchbook habit is back where it was a year or so ago, but I am definitely enjoying my time in my sketchbook again, which is a big step forward.
The early parts of the section were probably my favourite. I loved doing plein-air work again and I think the everyday fashion exercise is probably some of the most interesting work I have done in a while - think it's just a shame that it didn't really translate into the assignment itself. I'm trying to incorporate a variety of approaches into how I work and particularly trying to let myself make more instinctual marks. Where possible I am trying to incorporate more non-digital approaches, but that's not always easy given my lack of space to use them.
I particularly enjoyed revisiting medical illustration and history as part of my research tasks and it's still as engaging for me as when I was at medical school. I think there is definitely an avenue for me to explore medical illustration more - particularly when it comes to aspects of mental health and neurodiversity. I think this might be a good topic to base my critical review on, which I will discuss more with my tutor.
I think if there is one area I want to develop more, it's to try and be more fearless with my mark marking and work out ways of embracing my more messy tendencies in a way that still makes visual sense. I think I may need to do some 'master studies' of artwork that I like to try and understand how the choices of the artists I admire, and how they achieve some of the effects. I seem to be drawn to work that uses lots of layers - picking these apart can be difficult, so taking time to methodically re-create them could unlock some approaches I can integrate.
The Assignment
After the delay in my exercises, I re-made my plan for this assignment to link to a nearby event which showed off lots of different aspects of the area and had several events and businesses attending. However, it was rained off at the last minute! So I had to re-plan my re-plan...
I had to think about something more local, so I thought about the town where I have my office, it's gone through a lot of change over the last few years so I used my sketchbook to brainstorm how it could fit the Assignment brief.
I liked the idea of promoting activities and locations which people might want to visit to encourage more people to come and enjoy what the town has to offer through the regeneration scheme. I managed to book off a whole afternoon for the coursework and took my sketchbook with me to walk all around the town by myself. I stopped to sketch where I could. I wanted to capture families enjoying the locations, but I was conscious of being by myself sketching children. It felt a bit weird and I was very self-conscious. I did my best to make sketches in the locations, but I also took as many quick reference photos as I could. Before I knew it I had walked miles and miles and spent five hours! I was thankful that it managed to stop raining long enough for me to get this part done.
After I reviewed my sketches and photos, I sat down with my sketchbook again and created thumbnails for potential illustrations that I could make for the brief. Some of my ideas were re-creations of the scenes I had observed and drawn, while others were more constructed - I was imagining how these spaces are used at different times of the day. These ideas appealed to me. By this point I was actually on holiday, still trying to finish this assignment. I knew I likely wouldn't be able to do the final illustrations while away, but I could put my time into selecting ideas.
I had created different ideas for four illustrations. While I wanted to do five illustrations in total I knew by this point that I would be better off getting things finished, so contained myself to three. There were two ideas I liked, and I used the time on holiday to sketch them out digitally, even using my wife to help me with a reference photo!
When we got home, I decided to see if I could move away from doing everything digitally, so I worked out how to print my sketches onto inking paper, and then went about adding the lines with ink. This was a lot of fun to be doing it this way after a long working only digitally. I experimented with brushes, brush pens, and dip pens. In the end had the most fun using my fountain pens. I recently picked up a calligraphy version of the LAMY fountain pen - the nib is only 1.1mm so isn't actually that thick, but the nib flexes well and it has a very long pen body. The long body doesn't allow for posting the cap, but it does allow me to hold the pen more like a brush which allows for more expressive strokes. I am going to try this out more in my sketchbook.
I scanned in the artwork and then cleaned it up a little, and then processed the colouring digitally.
Thinking back to section one, (and the artists which I found interesting) I found the artwork of Heather Vaughan really compelling, so I decided to see what I could achieve with the assignment pieces using ideas from her work.
I really like her gritty ink work and choice of colours. In particular, however the thing I most wanted to try and learn was the way she layers colour and texture. At first glance it looks very simple but there are complex, well-thought-out choices for using texture, scratches, noise and halftones.
For the third illustration I decided to think about how I could be as economical with my time as possible. One of my sketches had a lot of potential as a spot illustration, so (again based on ideas from Heather Vaughan's portfolio) I tried another approach.
You can see the process for all three illustrations in the video below:
Finished Illustrations
Wrapping Up
I'm not thrilled with the three illustrations, however there are elements in all of them which I really like, and I am pleased overall with how I managed to keep all three illustrations confined to a very limited palette of colours. I think this works well. The drive-in illustration is closer to that of Vaughan's and I wish I had more skill and courage to have applied the mono-colour approach.
All three approaches were helpful in giving me space to experiment with rendering approaches. There are a number of approaches which I will be able to apply again with greater confidence:
Using noise to add variety and interest where there are large blocks of colour
Using light and colour to suggest form instead of trying to render it accurately.
Embracing wobbly lines.
Taking away lines can be as powerful as having them.
You can add in lines and texture with colour, not just the line work itself.
I work naturally with fountain pens.
Sometimes less is more, especially with spot illustrations.
Strong neon colours are hard, but a lot of fun.
The most important part is - it's done and I learned more. I actually feel like I want to explore some of these ideas more in my sketchbook and digitally. As much as I really enjoyed the reportage subjects, it was not the easiest to plan into my constraints. I am looking forward to the next section which I hope will give some more flexibility and allow me to get back on track with the timeline I have set for myself.
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