I decided to approach this task by applying a chosen combination of materials and processes as I executed my illustrations, by doing so, I could better visualise its practical applications for future work or apply them to a drawing style which I’m more familiar with.
The study of Lucy Austin and Dave McKean’s works provided a great insight into the variety of combinations and processes that some illustration materials can provide and that was the only thing that I used their work for, inspiration. I strived to stay relevant to the work which I’m currently involved in.
The challenging aspects of this exercise:
-Stepping out of the familiar materials which one is most comfortable with;
-Having a limited amount of resources to apply to this exercise;
-I found it hard to “keep it simple” as I was executing the illustrations, as I always felt tempted to refine the drawings even further.
Below are the pictures, all made with traditional mediums and I’ll give some insights where relevant.
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| The sketch at the bottom (Man’s cartoony face, I applied a waterbrush to the colour pencils since they’re water soluble. |
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| For this illustration, I started off by practicing and experimenting with different ink brush patterns Then came up with an idea to put them in practice, sketched the man with a dog. Made a series of thumbnails to find the best composition and once I was happy with one, I made a rough sketch with pencil and applied to water soluble colour pencils, at this stage you can still erase the pencil marks but I didn’t need it since I’ve found a pleasing and simple colour palette. |
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| Once happy with the preliminary sketch, I refined the drawing by applying a water brush to the watercolour pencils, waited for it to dry and then added a layer of black ink on top of the figures and light-post. I was inspired by Dave McKean’s pictures, which he does that quite a lot, layers ink on top of watercolour or some other medium. From that point onwards, my focus with the inks was to create a contrast between the foreground and background whilst considering where the light source was in order to find a placement for the blacks, in this illustration, I added blacks to create a pleasing image but also to disguise my inking mistakes with the dog. |
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| These set of illustrations were made on A2 paper so technically it counts as 4 pages (minimum requested by the exercise). I’ve applied the techniques and combinations of materials at the same time that I was executing the illustrations. On the top right illustration, I’ve used wet acrylic paint and did some layerings, then added more water to the red acrylic to create a diluted effect shown on the background figures. For the bottom right illustration, I used the same colours but used some layering, splattering and dripping of red paint to create a more abstract feel to the picture. What resulted from this techniques dictated how I would approach the drawing afterwards, because of how random the results can be, Once the paint was dry, I added some ostriches with black ink since it was what the marks suggested to me. |
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| Acrylic and Charcoal stick. The process consisted of adding diluted red and yellow acrylic with a wide brush on the background. The dried marks suggested to me the side view of a woman’s face and therefore with a charcoal stick, I layered it on top of the acrylic and kept “sculpting” the figure until I was satisfied with the achieved result. |
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| Pen and Tombow Dual Brush ABt. This exercise was the perfect occasion to put them in use as I have bought the Tombow’s years ago and kept them unopened in my cupboard, It was good to experiment how they would behave with a pen and to practice blending the colours. I started by sketching the boy’s face with pen, then I added the colour brushes in areas of the face where the shadows are located, i didn’t add much colour as I was unsure of how the pens would behave with water. Once I applied the waterbrush, my focus was to blend them in a way to create a smooth transition. I the added the background, used yellow at the top and orange at the bottom leaving the half-way point between them empty to allow the two colours to blend smoothly when transitioning. |
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| Ink Brush, Black Marker, Pen and Inkwash, finished on Procreate. Started off by looking at some reference images, I looked for someone who would have a face that best represented the Batman in my opinion, I looked through Pinterest faces by adding something search words like “stoic man face side view”.Once happy with the search, I made a few thumbnails in order to find the best placement of the figure on the paper, roughly sketched the figure, using the reference just to find a good chin and pose but I didn’t depend on it fully, the body and shut was drawn from imagination. I followed it by inking the figure with a Brush pen and ink pen, later I applied a really light wash, and kept layering it with darker values of wash. On top of that, used the brush pen and markers to fill large areas of black and refined the edges between with and black with some render lines to help smooth the transition from light to dark on top of the wash. Not being too proficient in managing efficiently different wash values, the background ended up too untidy for my taste so I took a photograph of the drawing to edit the background in order get a smoother result. |
Conclusion:
This exercise I found it hard to complete as it was deceivingly simple because it was open to different interpretations. It forced me to leave my comfort zone in what materials and techniques are concerned, yet I found it to be gratifying because I used materials which I completely ignore and couldn’t visualize how I could keep them relevant to my work. It certainly expanded my awareness and skill set to tackle future creative challenges I might face when drawing a comic or an illustration.
Some of these techniques I already decided to adopt them for my current work.
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