Last Thursday I was lucky enough to grab a place in the weekly life drawing session after classes. The model was a middle-aged man called Peter, which was admittedly a challenge. In the sessions I’d attended in summer, I’d only ever drawn female models.
My placement in the room was to the side, which meant I got a LOT of foreshortened poses. No complaining, though – it’s the perfect storm of challenges that help me improve.
These were two five-minute poses. You can see I realised I had to loosen up after the first, and opted for charcoal instead. I learned that with a pose as short as this, there’s really no point measuring because you’re going for a gesture and a dynamic feeling.Above are ten two-minute poses, each immediately after the other. Honestly, I felt like I’d run a marathon after this was over. This was invaluable for my eye, but I remember looking at everyone else in the room and exchanging mutually exhausted glances.Here I was lent a thick brown graphite stick. It was water-soluble, and loads of fun to play with. This was a 15-minute pose, and Peter was heavily foreshortened. My eye was clearly in it this time – I’m pleased with this drawing. After a short break, the final pose was 25 minutes long. I found measuring this quite difficult, but the foreshortening was again a good challenge.
The practice that the two-hour session afforded me was so useful. It’s quite an awkward time of the evening, at 4:30 to 6:30pm – because staying in from class can be exhausting and it makes for a very long day. I’ll definitely try to attend again, though.
The fashion workshop was about colour theory in relation to design, e.g. for a fashion collection. We identified interesting colours in our own images and mixed them using gouache paint.
Each colour was A4.
We then used these colours to look at how the context affects other colours.
Here, the cream stands out a lot against the dark maroon because the contrast is very high. The cream seems paler against the yellow as they’re both so light. Again, the orange stands out against the dark maroon. I like it against the blue-grey because blue is complimentary to orange.
We then created abstract colour charts similar to “trend books” used in the fashion world.
On this design sheet you can see the original image, the colour in context to its background and experiments with quantity of colour. I used circles of different sizes.
In terms of what went well, using circles to explore the colours was very successful. On the presentation they offer a different shape to all of the square and rectangle displays.
I enjoyed this workshop a lot, and of course colour theory is important to every discipline of art including illustration.
How can I take this further? In my own work, before I undertake a piece, I could explore relevant colour schemes. This might be from a photo I’ve taken, because I liked the idea of drawing original inspiration from the everyday.
Keeping my illustrations to a very limited colour pallette is an exercise I’d like to try out, hopefully in series.
Finally, I was inspired by this other piece:
I liked this layout because of the experimentation with shapes. Bars lie horizontally as well as vertically on the page, and the colours are arranged well.
The aim of the workshop was to take inspiration from architecture to create our own textiles. Examples of architects we took inspiration from included Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava.
The morning focused on creating samples of textiles and learning basic techniques.
This is a zigzag pencil pleated fabric. It is created by folding two sheets of paper into this shape and sandwiching fabric between as a type of mould. Applying heat sets the fabric to the same shape. This is the process to create a box pleat. We offset the other side’s pleats to create a twisted box pleat. The final result can be seen in the photo of my completed work.This is a twisted pencil pleat. The samples were finished that afternoon by sewing a straight line across the pins on a sewing machine. I created this myself. I quite like how organic it is; it reminds me of a beehive or maybe holes that decay causes in wood. The finished work.
In terms of what I enjoyed or found useful, being taught how to use the department’s sewing machines will be invaluable. Since I enjoy embroidery, I could use the sewing machine to create bags or pockets from the material I embroider on – or to work on garments that already exist, like shirts.
The day of the workshop, I was in a very bad headspace. My heart wasn’t entirely in the second half of the day, so I could have made more of the time I was given.
In taking this further, I will probably focus on applied textiles rather than constructed textiles. It resonates more closely with my illustration-based art.
We were asked to take notes and review four people’s work we liked.
Zoe Brown: Her art was really interesting.
The colours and ideas behind this fashion design really took me. The circular shapes and the use of old records are pleasing, and I like that they get larger below the waist to create the overall shape of the garment. The rest of the records have been used here. You can see the waist shape and the tailored top half of the dress. It borderlines abstract, but you can clearly see a garment in the shapes. Her sketchbook had lots of collage work like this. It was very experimental and she took things to quite a depth.
In relation to my work: Zoe’s work is a little more experimental than mine. While she seems to prefer fashion, I gravitate to illustration, but the lesson learned is the same. I’d like to collage a bit more, if only to generate ideas.
Sharon Bradford
Her reflective journal is teeming with life! Her sketchbook is filled with brightly coloured work like this. Here, the circles and curved lines give the illustration an organic feeling I love. It feels like plants are bursting out of the circles.
In relation to my work: her work is quite similar in feel to mine – that is, bright colours and an illustrative quality. Her stream of consciousness and the quality of documentation in her reflective journal is definitely something I’ll try to learn from. The fold-out parts of her journal made me smile: I can’t resist something physically interactive.
Zaina Abbas
In my notes, I’ve described her work as something that reminds me of a Hammer Horror film, or Rocky Horror. The nauseously busy and bright colours are almost flamboyant, and I love the style. Look at the layering here! I feel like I need to attach her brain to my brain, because I honestly can’t compute creating something like this.
In relation to my work: What I really need to do is start working with other material that already exists. This idea of layering things and mixing original art with photographs and prints is something I’ve been needlessly reluctant to try out. In addition, you can’t help but see Zaina in these pages. This style is wonderfully personal.
Katherine Hughes
The bright, blocky yellow with black liner over it works incredibly well here. Katherine clearly has an advance perspective on shapes. The teal brushstrokes and the idiosyncrasy of the black doodles on top are really pleasing to look at. Her “Miniature people” house.
In relation to my work: What I was most impressed with was the amount of imagination that went into Katherine’s Miniature People survival kit project. She’d created a whole world and I am COMPLETELY taken by it. It’s the kind of imagination you’d see in a writer.
I do love genuinely inspired ideas like this. If I’m passionate about something, I make good work. Maybe I should e-mail her and see if she wouldn’t mind taking the idea a little further with me…
I’ll leave you with a quote I can’t stop thinking about from another student’s work. Unfortunately, I don’t have the source.
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
I took the best quality image I could of the Lovers, the final product of the Exquisite Corpse workshop. I uploaded it into Clip Studio Paint and messed around with layer effects and learned the basic animation timeline feature by creating a gif showcasing some of the effects.
Above were all experiments with the Darken layer effect. In only affecting the background, I can create bright images that still allow for the contrast of the black figures. This was the saturation layer. It’s the crudest filter, but I really liked the colour skew in the worst affected areas like Kermit.
This is the exported .gif file. Here I’ve experimented with darken, lighten, soft and hard light – but my favourite layer to play with was Exclusion. Exclusion actually reversed what was dark, so in the original workshop when I printed off inverted sheets you catch a glimpse of the original values.
The main thing I learned was the animation timeline, and how to export as a .gif. I already knew about all of the layer effects, but having the freedom to showcase them all meant I discovered Exclusion.
Yesterday was the first technical workshop of the block – video with Kate. We were required in groups to shoot and edit a short video featuring “matching graphical cuts”, e.g. the circular part of an eye fading out to a moon in a sky. The shape, form or colour matches between shots and creates a tangible link between otherwise unrelated scenes.
A short storyboard.
One of the biggest difficulties was space and technology. Due to booking issues, we were in a very small edit suite with macs (my burning hatred for apple macs is stoked every single time I sit down at one of their shiny emotionless screens). Our mac was so confused we ended up working on Kate’s laptop.
If I were to take this further on my own, I can rest easy in the knowledge that I might have room to edit properly once there’s not a whole workshop in the room.
Here is the finished video. I have made this private, but just ask me if you’d really like to see it.
What was I pleased with? The group work went smoothly on this one. We had a good time, and everyone got their respective shots onto Google Drive and shared them with me. Importing the shots was probably the hardest thing because it needed so much collating.
I’m happy with this video as a whole. The shot passing the notebook across the table was edited very smoothly.; I feel like we hit the brief exactly with it. Kate seemed over the moon too!
What would I improve? In terms of the video, I’d ideally shorten the length of time the screen is entirely white (between the paper and the sky). It gets a little arduous watching that, and loses some of its energy.
Where can I take this? If I’d had a little more time in the edit suite alone, I could have played with PremierPro for quite a long time. I’ll need to think of a small project or something, just so I have something to edit.
I could talk to Kate or Louise about the possibility of animating over a video on some kind of transparent layer. Think Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I’m not sure whether I’d be using Adobe Animate or Premier Pro or what there.
The point of this lesson was to imitate a parlour game from the 17th Century called Corpus Exquis, or Exquisite Corpse. This involves cutting up and collaging images to create figurative characters. They are just recognisable as human but have a surreal or creepy feeling to them.
The head our group created in the first workshop.
The first exercise was collaborative. We created a head as a trio, and other groups created bodies and legs. These were placed together.
This was the entire body. I have to say I prefer the top two units compositionally.
What I was really happy with in this exercise was the collaboration. The strip of eye over an existing eye delighted me, and I would never have thought to do it. The diagonal row of faces leading out from the center of our head was Martha’s idea, and that again became one of my favourite parts.
Another really useful element was learning how to use the photocopier and scaling things up or down as well as playing with colour. This I will definitely use in my work outside of classes, to create iterations of characters or ideas.
“Lovers” – the final half of the day was a solo project creating characters similarly to the morning’s.
I was very pleased with how Lovers came out. I didn’t start off with any idea in mind except with all of the sheets full of images that took my fancy. A pair of heads on one sheet looking at each other became the base of the two faces, with other features stuck on top.
Even though this project was on my own, I ended up using a large jacket that Martha didn’t want to clothe my left Lover after having nothing the right shape myself. So it still wouldn’t have looked like it does, had I been working alone outside the studio.
How could I take this further? I have a Vogue magazine now which I think I will use to repeat this exercise at some point; if not the exact same then on a slightly smaller scale (to save my printer money!). I will also place Lovers into Clip Studio Paint and experiment with layer effects to create a series.
This project was all about creating fine and abstract art based on the laws of chance. We took part in four activities. I’ve detailed exactly what we did in my reflective journal, so I’ll just upload pictures and critically reflect here.
String drop felt like quite a silly activity. In reality, I like what I created with it a lot.
How could I take this further? I could use the activity of “dropping” paper shapes onto magazine images to select images and shapes to collage with. This would force me to randomly select textures rather than carefully cutting out images I found appealing. I thought that if I coloured in the spaces in blocks, it could create quite an appealing background to another illustration or drawing. I could simply repeat the exercise with grass, straw, leaves or other natural material.
This was geometric randomness. I don’t really like this as a piece of art on its own.
How could I take it further? I thought I could do this with more limited colours, e.g. blue, purple and pink, to create a random piece of art that was slightly more aesthetically pleasing.
This was the collaborative, instructional drawing. I had a blast actually doing this exercise. I’m getting to quite like letting go of control in collaborative exercises. (And I never thought I’d hear myself saying that!) Things happen that would never have happened if I’d worked on my own.
How can I take this further? I could collaborate again with friends – e-mailing or swapping drawings to work on for each other.
The conceptual emotional drawing was fun again, because I jump at any opportunity to introspect and write about what I’m feeling. I like the composition of this a lot, and the stricter colour scheme made me feel better from the earlier drawings.
How could I take this further? Well, I actually made Jamie complete an identical exercise that night. I have his art and I might turn it into a larger piece, so that they could exist in a series.
Finally, I created some random poems using dice and newspaper clippings which you can see in my sketchbook. These really were nonsensical at times… I don’t know why, but I suppose I thought I’d create something super edgy and deep! They were still fun. I might create a few for my reflective journal or put a twist on them for something fun to do.
I do hope I’ll do some more work related to chance, even if just a small aspect of something else. It’s nice to leave the thinking to the laws of physics and probability!
Gained in Translation was about how we interpreted description in drawing, and then interpreting drawing in a 3D model made of cardboard. The art and personal element came in the gaps of interpretation between words and paper, and 2D drawing and 3D model.
I enjoyed drawing from Said’s description. I was lucky that the object he described seemed to have a face, as I have a habit of anthropomorphising – and then becoming attached to – things.
I know Willie is a rude name, but I can’t get it out of my head for the little guy.
Below is what I found out the description was actually of, right at the end of the day.
A chipmunk type thing… this item doesn’t have a formal use. I’m told it was a ceramic student’s old work.
I translated this into a 3D model as best I could.
I thought that by chance, this cardboard model has a lot of personality. Far more so than the original (rather creepy) drawing.
Methods:
For the base, I used two circular pieces of durable cardboard and cut one length of flexible (one-side-corrugated) cardboard for the middle piece. I would secure an area a few inches wide with gummed tape, then work through the area with more individual pieces of tape until it was completely secure and uniform. I did this right the way around both sides.
For the (relatively) spherical body, I created a kind of guideline using two hoops of flexible cardboard arranged like two interlocking bangles. I then worked around it with long eye-shaped pieces, similar to how they stick maps on globes.
What could have been improved? I feel like this session went very well overall, actually. A little longer to work might have been nice – but I understand that the time constraints were kind of part of the project. I managed to finish him. Similarly, other materials like paper or tape might have been useful, but the fact that we were only allowed gummed tape was part of the project too.
Where can I take this? Well, funny I should ask that – I’ve already taken it a little further with a couple of character design exercises. I might make a separate blog about it when I finish it, but what I’m doing with the model is using it as a starting point to design a sweet little character. I feel like I’d be doing him dirty if I just forgot about him. He wants to come to life!
For that, I’ve drawn the model a couple of times quickly to get a feel of it before printing off a couple of pictures for inspiration. I’ve also painted some ink silhouettes that I’ll line a few iterations of his character onto.
I might well be tempted to using cardboard to generate ideas again. Considering that I have some issues with varying body shapes in my art, something that forces me to make shapes like this might help kick start that process.
For a long time, I’ve been inspired by Sarah Graley, who is an illustrator and comic artist.
Her art is sweet and heavily stylised. She uses round shapes and exaggerated expressions to draw about her life and partner, as well as having multiple side comics. Below is an example of her work, taken from instagram:
I copied the lineart of a couple of her cats because I was taken by them.
These are pretty much direct copies of cats Sarah has drawn.
I then used the proportions and shapes from Graley’s art to make some of my own art. My cat is called Mittens and she always looks like she’s cross, even though she’s really very sweet.
An image before I added any lines or colour.The completed page, with me creating 6 iterations of Mittens.
Each iteration experimented with placement of facial features, colour and her proportions or gestures.
Graley focuses more on the feeling and message of the comics than making them perfect.
What am I going to take away from this? I like Graley’s expressions a lot. The shape of the eyes might find it’s way into my own work. The relaxed anatomy appeals to me, e.g. lack of real wrist or arm anatomy in some cases even though the joints are clearly suggested. I continually seesaw back and forth between pedantism and relaxation in terms of how realistic my proportions are, but I know that’s just a case of finding a style.
There’s also less literal advice I could take from her. As an illustrator, her online presence is consistent and so is her style and content (Our Super Adventure, her main comic, has been continuing for years). She regularly attends cons (I met her other half Stef at ComicCon this may!) and tables there selling prints and comics. Her side projects will also bring her exposure and widen her portfolio.
Finally, I feel obliged to attach a picture of Mittens for you all to enjoy. I know the perfect one.
Gemma's Art 
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