This task took a considerable amount of time to fully understand it as I had to be constantly revising the guidelines to make sure I was on the right track. I found it to be a bit abstract in my initial interpretation so I went through other student blogs and see how they approached this task. My conclusion was that everyone had their own peculiar interpretation, there wasn’t a common denominator in how they accomplished the task.
My approach was to pick one of the landmark sketches and photos, then to think about an adjective to base my illustrative drawing or a theme around, make a mind map of the elements to include on the picture to best suit the story, collect reference photos , make thumbnail sketches to decide upon the best composition, make a semi-final sketch finishing with the final illustration.
Below I will describe all my steps with some photos of my sketchbook.
- First thing I did was to choose one of my landmark sketches and the photos which I based the sketch on, taking notes and writing different ideas that I could apply on the future illustrative drawing. It was on the mini mind map at the bottom of the sheet (image below) that I came up with the idea to explore. On this step there was quite some writing, more than what I usually do, in order to get my ideas for the sketch aligned with the task.
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| I took some notes of what the exercise asked and collecting ideas that could turn into illustrations. |
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| The landmark sketch I chose. |
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| The photo I based my landmark sketch on, due to Quarantine restrictions I had to limit myself to Google Earth. |
Next step was to choose some words or a theme that I wanted to convey in my illustration.
Upon looking at my sketch and photo, I instinctively thought of a Monday morning commute under a rainy day, with that idea in mind, I came up with the adjective “Gloomy”.
On the next sketchbook page I made a mind-map with drawing ideas to include on the illustration,
Words like “rain” , “grey sky” and ”umbrella” came to mind. In terms of colour, I wanted a de-saturated, almost noir atmosphere, to achieve that I thought of using watercolour in tones of black.
The choice of using the water colour was to create an effect of drowsiness, similar to what you get when you’re commuting on a winter, still dark early Monday morning, to capture the vision I get when I’m waking up and visualise my way to work.
To achieve that vision, I created a bunch of thumbnail sketches to decide what the best shot would be, imagining different camera angles and composition.
I wanted a drawing that would capture rain falling, that showed a “grim” weather, that captured the train station and people with their umbrellas walking towards the station.
Once I chose my favourite thumbnail composition, I searched for reference photos that included groups of people commuting, someone holding an umbrella and some more photos of the train station . I then practiced drawing those things before I committed to a bigger thumbnail where I would assemble those parts.
With the illustration above, I didn’t think the drawing was gloomy enough the “accident” of adding the pink, yellow and red. To correct that, I took a picture of the sketch and edited on my iPad Procreate app, where I desaturated the image slightly, the built an “overlay” layer and added a rain effect brush, to emphasise the rain. I was happier with the result.
In a tone of reflection of the work done, I discussed how the image evolved as I focused on my adjective “Gloomy” on the descriptions above and I tested different compositions through the use of thumbnail sketches using photographic reference in the process of developing my original sketches.
Before starting the task, whilst reading what it asked, I found myself a bit confused as to how to effectively complete the task, as a result, I had to read it over and over until things got clear.
I wasn’t used to make a lot of writing in the sketchbook for idea generation but I found its benefits to be useful in my work, getting ideas down in writing is something I know will help me and slowly I’m getting used to it, a bit like not liking to exercise but you know you have to do it to stay healthy. This part of the process wasn’t as fun as the drawing part so I procrastinated a bit at this stage.
I looked through other students blogs to see how they approached this exercise and I concluded that there wasn’t a one-way method to make it, that gave me a bit of reassurance to believe more on my ideas and stick to them.
When I arrived to the process of making the final illustrative drawing, I was getting happier as I was seeing the pieces fitting together. On a later reflection, I found it beneficial to write those notes and thumbnails.
I’m aware I could have made more illustrative drawings but the fact is that this exercise took me 2 days just to make this one drawing and it could have taken longer should I decided to give more detail and for that reason I stuck with just one drawing,
Words like “rain” , “grey sky” and ”umbrella” came to mind. In terms of colour, I wanted a de-saturated, almost noir atmosphere, to achieve that I thought of using watercolour in tones of black.
The choice of using the water colour was to create an effect of drowsiness, similar to what you get when you’re commuting on a winter, still dark early Monday morning, to capture the vision I get when I’m waking up and visualise my way to work.
To achieve that vision, I created a bunch of thumbnail sketches to decide what the best shot would be, imagining different camera angles and composition.
I wanted a drawing that would capture rain falling, that showed a “grim” weather, that captured the train station and people with their umbrellas walking towards the station.
Once I chose my favourite thumbnail composition, I searched for reference photos that included groups of people commuting, someone holding an umbrella and some more photos of the train station . I then practiced drawing those things before I committed to a bigger thumbnail where I would assemble those parts.
The page below shows a slightly bigger thumbnail, where I already had a more clear vision of how the sketch would look like. I added a rough 3-point perspective grid to help in combining the people in the setting and the drawing to not look with the feeling that something was bit off.
Below the thumbnail, I did a “final rehearsal” of a person with an umbrella walking into the station.
Also added the train station sign to help to tell the story and make it clear that the building was a train station.
The picture below was meant to be my final illustration, along the process I made some improvisations such as adding colour to a few umbrellas and the sign post as well as making rain lines with a black and white pen.
Once I finished, I asked myself “does the drawing look gloomy enough?”.
I then played around with different photo filters, just to make sure if there was anything that I could do to enhance and make the characters more clear and the picture below was my final result.
Before starting the task, whilst reading what it asked, I found myself a bit confused as to how to effectively complete the task, as a result, I had to read it over and over until things got clear.
I wasn’t used to make a lot of writing in the sketchbook for idea generation but I found its benefits to be useful in my work, getting ideas down in writing is something I know will help me and slowly I’m getting used to it, a bit like not liking to exercise but you know you have to do it to stay healthy. This part of the process wasn’t as fun as the drawing part so I procrastinated a bit at this stage.
I looked through other students blogs to see how they approached this exercise and I concluded that there wasn’t a one-way method to make it, that gave me a bit of reassurance to believe more on my ideas and stick to them.
When I arrived to the process of making the final illustrative drawing, I was getting happier as I was seeing the pieces fitting together. On a later reflection, I found it beneficial to write those notes and thumbnails.
I’m aware I could have made more illustrative drawings but the fact is that this exercise took me 2 days just to make this one drawing and it could have taken longer should I decided to give more detail and for that reason I stuck with just one drawing,
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