Exercise 4.1 - Description and Depiction

This exercise was a step-up from the previous task in terms of adding more emphasis on words, their importance as a visual medium and how they work in consonance with imagery to fortify the message of our drawings. I was a bit apprehensive at first as to how I would cope with creative writing specially because english isn’t my first language and therefore it was a real test to my english lexicon.

In this task, my first step was to take a trip out to a scene of my choosing which was the High Street in Watford, where I sat at a bench facing a bar with victorian architecture, it had quite a dramatic appeal to me the contrast of the building with the grey cloudy sky, and I was sure that I would be able to evoke some writing that would match up the setting.

The next step was to draw four equally sized oblong outlines across a single page in my sketchbook.

In the first box I drew some lines to write on and I wrote a letter to someone imaginary describing my setting and attempting to be poetic in the writing at the same time.

In the second box I had to use words instead of pictures where I would have drawn a picture. These labels should include a description of any action within the scene as shown in my illustration below.

In the third box I drew the scene simply as it was and used only pictures and finally in the fourth box I combined box 2 and 3, creating a balance between describing the scene creatively with words and pictures.

Task reflection 

I enjoyed combining the description with the picture, I thought they complemented really well, specially when the scene had some intrigue, mistery or drama. I liked that even when I wrote some literal description, it added more interest to the picture by ‘exacerbating’ in a good sense the imagery, adding mood and drama. The opposite can be true where there’s descriptive words contradicting what the picture shows like "a bright yellow sun" description tag overlapping a grim sky for example. These techniques can be effective in sequential art if made correctly. In conclusion to this point, words and images reinforced each other.

After writing the letter, the content weighed on my decision of what materials I would use for the picture, I wanted a colourless picture with different tones of grey up to black to reinforce the mood of the description, on the other hand, had I written a happier letter then I would opt for a more vibrant colour palette of warm values to emphasise the narrative.

This task and the techniques contained are skills which I certainly will carry with me since  my goal will be to create sequential art where words and pictures go hand in hand.