week four

Week four Analysing poems

This session task was to create a series of illustrations that would be presented to a group of school children. But before I started the actually making the covers, Kieran wanted to present use with an  range of themes that we going to be used for the poem covers but he also gave me some media to use as a beginning point and a understand what we would do when we giving information when creating something. Our themes were Childhood memories, Identity and inside our head. The first one I had was Children memories which was a by poem “some of these things are true” by Fern Hill. This poem was about the concept of time and memories. This was an interesting poem because it had a ton of visual props and metaphor. So I had a lot of information to go with. With this information I decide to create an illustration that illustrates sections of the poem. So my plan was to take the six paragraphs and create them into six sections. But overall this did not work because it would take a lot of analysis of the poem and add a lot of detail. If I had more time I would take up this idea. But this was just practice. The next subject was identity which we had a film which was “1928 Dadaist film” which was a film based on the concept of time and the movement of Dadaism. Overall this video contained a sense of bending reality and giving the sense of illusion through giving inanimate object movement and the concept of time was given through the rewind of the movie. With this I came up with the idea of evolution of cat changing into a human-cat. I got this idea from the movement of time and the idea of identify. My idea was that the cats lost it identify of being to animal then gain the identity of a human. The final image to create was the theme into the mind in which I had to create a image while listen to Cinq Nocturnes by Erik Satie .This classic piece of music was a mixture of soft and hard notes on the piano, while listening to music I imagined a ballerina dancing on a piano because one that was the instrument being played and also I imagined ballerina because of notes being played remind of dance movements. This image overall matches the theme because it was what was in my head, what I imagined. Overall this exercise helped me understand what would be expected of me when given information and asked to create a illustration to it. With this exercise I also took my previous information of take my time with the thumbnails which create detailed drafts which clearly visual explains what I explain to do. Also with this task in which I was given images to analysis which was a fun task and a great way to get a idea of what to do. To see my take on this, see them below.                                      
                

Ideas one

Ideas two

Ideas three

week three

This week we had to draw scenes from observational which expressed emotion. With this session we were given Edward Ardizzone which was an artists that create a sense of dread through the use of colour. With this as my reference point I want to use this in my task for today.






For my task I took my scene from the café provided in the university. I decided this scene because it provided a sense of dread from the staff because they were packing away and are tired from a long day of work. I decide to go for a colour scheme that was realistic because I still want to practice my skills with get the scene of colour from life observational. With this drawings I want to give the feeling of depression or tiredness. To get this ideal effect I need to try it mostly by using gestural movement to create that emotion response. I think that I got this idea by looking at the person emotion gesture and facial expression. I think with this little experiment, I have found that I like it quite interesting how movement create emotion and I want to create and develop this idea through in the future to understand how body movement express emotion.

This week my intent for this session was to communicate a sense of being somewhere with an illustration informed by a reportage. This was to take a scene that I see from a choice of people smoking or drinking coffee. This was interesting task because we had to use the style of Edward Ardizzone R.A who did draw scenes of Second World War, London. He mostly describe the scene just by the use of colour to visual provide an emotion to the image, this is show by using bald colours such as browns and soft pastel colours. This was useful as reference because it helped me get the right idea in my head what the colour schemes should be use to express the emotion of desperation and depression. My aim was to express the emotion of my chosen drawing subject emotion of tiredness. With my aim, it was to use thumbnails that were quick and rough to gather information of the person. Overall I used colours that they subject was wearing and I just created the outline of them to get the idea of them. Overall I think this a nice way of getting the information but I should also write a little bit of information so then I then have written notes as well as visual and final I should take my time with the thumbnails so that I can get better information of the visual notes, make it also more visual more presentable and final take my time with them. When I got back to the studio I had to recreate the scene from memory and the visual notes. With this I took more time with the drawing and carefully looked at the visual notes that I took. I am overall pleased with this image because it captures the emotion of coffee worker which was a tired and fed up look. I also tried a technique that I have been practicing with is cross stitching which is improving and becoming a lot neater. But I still need to practice this technique to get better and quicker. The info that I got back off Kieran was great, he told me to keep practicing this observational style but to also involve background into the scene which I have been lacking, so I have my new aim of including background with my visual notes and my illustrations. Overall this session has show me that I enjoy taking visual notes as recreate them later on, this is a skill that I defiantly want to continue in the future and with use it on the London trip tomorrow.

Edward Ardizzone work

My reference to Edward Ardizzone

My take on Edward Ardizzone

Week two

Week two

This week we had to create illustrations based on a news story based on a Indonesian that lost their children in the floods in Indonesia’s in 2004 but found their children 10 years later.

The intent of this project was to investigate the use of visual metaphors to communicate complex emotional response. So in generally we had to create an illustration that generated the emotional of the families lost or the families reunion. We also had a reference of Shaun Tan who creates illustrations with a sense of surrealism. We had to apply this idea of Shaun Tan work to my own work. The book that we were referencing to was the “The arrival” which is based on Shaun Tan own experience of moving to a new place. This is all visual described through the Architecture of the buildings and the creatures of the place. This is done to show the idea of alienation to the character but also the reader.

With this aim I did some drafts on what I planned to do with this idea of the news story that we read. At first I planned on going for a graphic novel panel in which I wanted the family to be separated and reunion. But with this idea overall as presentation it was not the aim of the task in which we have to make it more surreal. So then I decided to develop this idea with more through simplistic, so I developed this idea that maybe it could be present through tear because I could add a reflection of child be taken away. But overall this I thought was too simplistic so I want to appeal the idea of double purpose. So I decide to go for hands that are looking like they are joining or separated. With this idea I presented to Kieran, overall this idea was good but it could use a bit more of surrealism applied to the image. So I added the idea of adding a little figure at the bottom of the hands of the girl from the story and the hands would be designed out of wreckage from the story and the other out of waves. Overall this project was great to help gain the idea of what to do when ideal creating a illustration for a newspaper article. But overall I would not like to continue with idea with my future project because it was something that I was not overall keen about but I would not mind it if i got asked by a company/commissioned to do it.          

Design and idea process while looking at Shaun Tan work

Idea thumbnails one

Idea thumbnails two

First project to gain a understand of what expected of us for next year and caricatures

With this class I been taught what is expected to do when creating my brief for my next year project. I was show what to do when creating a brief by showing six sections. The sections are intent which is what I am going to investigate, so what my aim? The second section is content, so what is the test content you are going to use to experiment. The third section is communication objections which is what am I communication with my experimenting and what do I want people to think and feel when they see it? The fourth sections is reference, this sections contains what am I referencing, what does it communicate and what is the general intent? The firth section is how does it work by showing visual thumbnails, languages and aspects of production. Final what is my experimenting method.


With this first project we had to design caricatures of Nigel Farage by clay and drawings. My intent for this project was the idea of commutation about the nature of somebody fiction or non-fiction.  Then the content was Nigel Farage, the communication objectives for me was to show that he is a evil or silly twit. The reference that I used were photo of Nigel Farage and the illustrator Gill Ray. First my experiment method was to make Nigel Farage into a xenomorph.  I decided to make him into this creature is because he mouth is constantly open and imagine something coming out of it. Before I started making a clay caricature, I draw thumbnails of what I planned of what I wanted to do but overall I made the thumbnails look more like a crocodile than a xenomorph and when transform that idea into clay, which is a media which I am not fond of. But overall I was not happy with the design because it did not go with what I wanted to present to the viewers was humour. So after that failure I came up with a new idea which to me seemed much better. I presented Nigel Farage as a butt because he constantly speaks shit to me and also he's double chins remind me of a saggy ass. So after do this reattempt of my caricature I was more pleased with the outcome because to me it provided the humour that I wanted to proved. After finishing this I then draw the 3d model with different media. The media  that I went for were watercolour pencils, fine liner and black ink. I used the black ink so that I could get the basic understand out the shading of the object and then use that information to create the watercolour outcome. This process worked very well and would definitely use it again when taking down information of an object. The fine liner outcome was to practice my cross hatching skills, with this outcome I was happy but I need to practice more and take my time because I noticed when I rush I don't make straight lines. So next time, take my time.


Overall this is just the start but it was good to get the information that I need to gain to understand what is expected of me in my third year. I cannot wait for the next assignment and what I am need to do to improve as illustrator.           

Layout of what I planned to do

This is my 3D model of what I planned to create.

Practicing tonal with colour and shading.