Assignment two - Happy Accidents/ Reflections about Part 2

This assignment consisted on creating an illustration by reviewing, assembling and developing elements from previous exercises. It was broken down into three stages with the first stage consisting of looking back at the “Facial Pareidolia” exercise, selecting a few characters from it and expanding on those ideas by building more fully developed characters. Second stage was about searching for a background/layout for my characters, either by looking at exercises from this section or from earlier exercises. The third stage was about putting together both the developed characters and the background.

The exercise was open-ended so therefore multiple ways of interpreting. My interpretation was described on the above paragraph. I will break down these stages  to show how I achieved my final illustration.

Stage 1 

Started by gathering all my facial pareidolia pictures plus one of my “drawing with objects“ illustrations to choose which one had the best potential for development.

I ended up choosing the last two drawings, the “Brushman” and the “Electric pencil sharpener skull” face. Afterwards, I gathered some references for Brushman’s costume, thinking of brushes I looked into the Renaissance period dresses, particularly what would Michelangelo would wear.

Next step was to make few character sheets to see what kind of body and  costume to add to him. I decided for drawing his body rather than using photographs.

After being satisfied by how Brushman looked, I looked into a second character, his “sidekick”, to achieve that, I redrew all the Pareidolia faces on paper, to help me visualise how each of these faces would look next to Brushman, so I opted for the skull/pencil sharpener face as it could be given a more realistic yet cartoony look, which is in line with the first chosen character.

I wanted these two characters to have the potential to be worked further in the future to make a storyline with them, by looking at them I thought that I could develop an Action/Comedy with violent tones, with that frame of mind, I based my second character within these parameters.

For his costume, I wanted a modern tone and quickly thought of how a hipster would wear, so I googled for ridiculous hipster outfits and found the one drawn in the picture.

Next step was to draw the two characters together to see how they would both look together.

Then I photographed the drawing and worked out which colours to put on them using my iPad Procreate.

The colour choice came out naturally, the Brushman’ s helmet colour was based on the reference photo I had from the previous exercise, the suit and footwear are typical colours. For the “Sharpener” same thing, used the colour of my reference material and the suit colour was changed to better contrast with the other colours.
  

Reference clothing I used, but tweaked the colour. https://runt-of-the-web.com/hipster-pictures

Stage 2

For this second stage, I looked through the previous exercises in my sketchbook, there was a sketch I made in Exercise 2.2 which I thought would be a good fit to include with the characters.

Not having a scanner nor printer, I cropped the photograph from the exercise and added to Procreate, then I isolated a part of the picture which could fit well within the characters, also the colour palette of the background complemented the characters colours, giving a mixture of warm and cold colours, which I found to be in harmony with each other giving a pleasant view.

Stage 3

This last stage, continuing the process described above, I had to find a way to harmonise the characters and background. Using the digital tools at my disposal, I added a foreground to the picture by drawing some vegetation in front of them and shading them a little bit to isolate them from the background, giving the illusion that they were in the middle ground.

And the last step I did was to add some light, to give the feeling they were in the woods with the beams of light that fall through the vegetation down into the ground.

 

I had in mind to make some mini-stories with these two characters, kind of a 9 panel comic story, firstly because I liked the way they looked and secondly because they were build with an idea in mind of them being some sort of vigilantes who went to public places and condemn people not following quarantine rules, similar to those viral videos of NHS nurses furious with people not respecting the social distancing, but these characters would have more violent responses.

I was kind of happy with the end result although I feel I could get a better line work to get a more professional look and I need to investigate more on how colour works. , however, for what the exercise asked, I honestly don’t know if I ticked the boxes of what the exercise asked.

Reflection

There were a few challenges I faced during part 2 of the course, I initially thought it would be a straightforward set of exercises but as I went along I started to see that some of the exercises were deceptively simple. 

One of the main challenges when working with unusual drawing techniques was that it felt out of my comfort zone exploring new materials and techniques that were outside the sphere of how I’m used to work, and for that reason I resisted in doing those exercises and had to find positives as a motivation to carry them out. A few of the “affirmations” I told myself was that this could provide useful for future work and improve it, I thought of ways of combining these techniques with work I’m currently doing in order to keep me interested. 

Another way that kept me motivated to overcome these challenges was to use material I already had but neglected it for years, I used to buy different materials, used once , the drawing didn’t end up as I expected, and traumatised, I consigned them into oblivion. So these exercises were an excellent opportunity to reuse them again, and making the most of it. As a result they’re back in my go-to materials.

After trying out unusual materials, I will be using the toothbrush and a cloth to combine them with ink for future sketchbook drawing techniques. As for  coffee and turmeric tea bags, I currently have a good watercolour kit which I can get the same results, but nonetheless, trying them out made me realise that they are a reliable alternative should I need it.

Moving from observed drawings towards a more imaginative approach is like studying for different subjects, they both have different ways of approach, while the former requires drawing what you observe whilst having some thought into how to compose what you observe, the latter requires more decision making and creative thought depending in what you draw. I think that, for example, to do figure drawing from imagination successfully, observed drawings are of great help. 

Another aspect of imaginative drawing which  my tutor pointed out to me was to create thumbnail sketches in order to find a good composition, creating abstract shapes as a base to build my drawings, and this technique I’m holding it to this day. I’ve noticed that some of my favourite artists use thumbnails and they emphasise how an important tool they are on creating their illustrations which gave more gravitas to cement it to my skill set.

What I learned from quick drawings that I’ll take it to part three was that they are essential to describe a scene, having a time limit forces you to filter important elements from unimportant ones.

In case of figure drawing , fast drawings can be called gesture drawings because you don’t draw in detail what you see, instead you capture the “spirit” of the pose or the energy which serves as the foundation to a drawing. 

Drawing people on scene requires fast drawings as you’ll find yourself  in places and situations where people are constantly moving and therefore fast drawing is crucial.

Of the illustrators mentioned in this section I enjoyed looking at Keith Larsen and Christoph Niemann because they directly  helped me to create the characters for this assignment, by following a similar methodology of researching objects and giving human features to them. 

Although Lucy Austin’s style is not the kind of work I look at primarily, she made me look at other artists with similar techniques that I felt more resonated with such as Dave McKean due to his leanings towards sequential art and his “darker” style. In the same fashion, looking at Sophie Peanut’s work made me look at other artists with fast drawings, both from imagination an observation, artists like Glen Vilppu , Steve Huston and Kimon Nicolaides, who are references in gesture drawing.

I would like to join a Sketchbook Circle and feel ready for it since it’s a good way to keep drawing regularly and holding oneself accountable although I already draw on a daily basis. It can be a good way to meet other likeminded students.