Illustrator's Toolkit 2

ILLU5020 (Illustrator's Toolkit)

week 1 - drawing

Week 2 - 3d

Following on from the work done in class, I then took an even more creative approach by finding random things around my house and placing them together in certain ways to create simple and abstract sculptures to represent that theme of dogs or cats. Each one may be interpreted differently by the viewer.

This one below was made using a desk lamp, adjusted in a way such that it creates the basic form of a dog. The wire coming out the back forms the tail while the subtle black edging against the flat white surfaces give the illusion of an outline of the legs/head. I also like the fact that much like the beginning of a sketch, the joints where each section bends can clearly be made out, almost like the shoulders of an animal.

Continuing with the theme of found objects, I made the one below using items from around the kitchen. I saw the cat food box had an arch when viewed from the side which could provide a nice bridge for the body. By cutting a hole in the back too, I was able to place a bottle of sauce in the rear to act as the tail. The front portion of the sculpture was simply just made from stacking another box on top of the body with a couple of blocks of cheese placed loosely on top of that to represent the ears. Clearly it's a very unrealistic representation of a dog, however it does somewhat capture the essence of the animal, particularly in the vertical positioning of the head, almost as if it's stood to attention with it's ears perked up.

This one below was constructed using those foam packaging peanuts. I saw the curvature of them and instantly thought of a skinny greyhound type dog. I used 3 of them placed in a 'w' shape to illustrate the curvature of the back, with one used as the head too to represent that long streamlined face they have. They tend to have small ears so I simply cut some triangles out of another and placed them on top. Because they have such long legs, I turned them vertically so it could actually be free-standing too. It's not the most recognisable sculpture, but I think it resembles what I was going for.

I had to get creative with this one on the left as it was incredibly difficult to get it free-standing. I just raided the cutlery drawer and thought what could make a basic four-legged animal shape and came to this conclusion. The forks act as the legs while holding up the body (the spoon) which is tilted on it's side so that the curved end can represent the head. On the bottom of the 'legs' are more of the packing peanuts which as well as acting as feet, also help the sculpture stand alone by adding some friction to the bottom of it.

The sculpture below was a little more complex than those others and required some actual craftwork, however still made from recycled found materials, which in this case would be several cardboard toilet roll tubes. I was inspired to create the shape of a Daschund dog with it's long body, long nose and short legs. It was very simple to make just by cutting out the required pieces of tubing and glueing them to the others with PVA. The legs were made of rolled up, torn pieces of newspaper and slotted into the body, with glue or adhesives needed.

WEEK 3 -PAINTING

nicholas uribe

Nicholas Uribe is an American artist currently based in Colombia. He is not a big name in terms of popularity, however he's somebody I follow on Instagram and somebody who's work I really admire. He is very active on social media, often doing live videos and sessions of his paintings, showing off his technical skills whilst also teaching the audience too. He works in a variety of media and posts a lot of sketches to his socials, however it's the acrylic and oil paintings I'm most interested in. The subjects of his paintings aren't anything particularly interesting, the characters depicted don't usually display much emotion, but it's the expression of Uribe's own work which is intriguing. He loves to be very thick and expressive with his marks, not just using basic skin tones either, but adding blues and greens and reds in the shadows to create that more realistic sense of depth.

angela sung

Angela Sung is a travelling artist who tours the world painting various subjects in often random locations. She is not well known, but I follow her Instagram and she is one of my favourite contemporary painters whom take inspiration from myself. Her colour palette is one of the most intriguing things about her work. It's not always representative of what she's seeing. The colours are often exaggerated and made to be much more vibrant than they should be. The block colours give an almost digital feel to her paintings sometimes. There also tends to be a lot of fine edges between surfaces and tones, which would suggest she uses thick, flat brushes to apply the paint in such a linear manner, which I like the look of actually. I think the expression of these strokes in what defines her work.

Watercolour & Acrylic painting

I set up a still life scene here using a plant-pot, a decorative bowl with a rope inside and an xbox controller; not the most traditional scene but I wanted to challenge myself. I've included a photo of me sat painting in front of the actual set-up to prove that it was in fact done from life. Although I'm pleased with the result, I can't help but think it lacks some personal touch; i.e. it's not very expressive, but more realistic.

The painting below is a self portrait. It wasn't done using a mirror, but instead using the back camera on my phone, so I was sat in one position glancing back at myself on the screen, which was most definitely a challenge and probably why my eyes are a bit lazy, lol. Since I do portraits regularly anyway, I know one of the golden rules is not to use warm tones or just simple greys in the shadows; you have to use a range of blues, greens, reds and whatever other shades there are. That's exactly what I've done here. Since I had the blue LED lights on in my room, there was some quite cool tones from the white and blue light which is why there are some elements of blue and purple, even a hint of green in the highlights on my face. As stated before though, while I'm relatively pleased with the outcome, it lacks some originality and personal touch; there no expression in it; it's possibly too over-worked?

This painting of Charlie's converse was also done from life, sat opposite eachother in the studio. The challenge here was that he obviously can't keep still forever so not only did it have to be a quick painting, but also somewhat improvised. Once the basic structure was in place, I could essentially just fill the rest in from there, estimating how the light would hit from this particular angle.

I also did this acrylic painting of a clear water bottle, which I had crumpled up beforehand to add more detail and depth to it as the light hit it to make it just that bit more of a challenge for myself. This painting is a bit more refined and detailed, however the expressive marks can still be seen within the different tones as I wanted to have directional strokes showing the form of the bottle.

The below painting is another still life, done from real-life reference. There were some interesting bottles lying around the kitchen, so I assembled them in to this arrangement with some soft top lighting. Drawing bottles is difficult as it is, even more so when they're clear, and getting all the reflections correct is most definitely a challenge. I started off working quite expressively, however that just never materialised and the more I worked on it, the more life-like it became. I will make the same point as I have in the others that it just lacks a bit of expression. My personal, preferred style to work in is realism so I suppose it has some personality to an extent but it is lacking otherwise - it's difficult to even make out that it's a watercolour piece.

The painting below is done in acrylic, trying to be more expressive with the paint unlike my watercolour examples. Instead of blending the paint is a smooth way, I've layered it on here, dry-brushing a lot of it to get those textured brush strokes and expressive marks. I liked the shirt Charlie was wearing and thought it would be rather challenging with all it's patterns and tones, however doing it in such a loose style helped reduce the amount of attention to detail that was needed when I could instead just apply the paint in roughly the right area and get a result that is equally as pleasing.

Concluding the painting workshop, I have found to enjoy working more with watercolour but being able to express myself more through acrylic paints so maybe in future a combination of layering the two mediums may work well for me. The ability to blend watercolours and let the run freely is what I like most, but the colours and tones often lack that vibrancy you get with acrylics and there's more opportunity for mistakes when using watercolours as opposed to acrylics with which you can just keep layering over and over again.

WEEK 5 - digital illustration (photoshop)

SAUL BASS

Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and filmmaker, best recognised for his designs of motion-picture title sequences and film posters. Bass adopted a very distinguishable minimal style. Bass was heavily influenced by the Bauhaus movement of the early 20th century, which was prominent throughout his education years. He loved the abstract, minimal aspect of it along with it's often very simple yet bold colour palettes and high contrast. It is evident that there's this influence in his work. Contrast plays a big part in Bass' designs, usually featuring a silhouetted form or text set against a warm tonal ground. He is more interested in producing imagery over type as he stated that text would often distract from it, hence the clever use of negative space in his works.

a.m.cassandre

A.M.Cassandre, real name Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron, was a french painter, commercial poster-artist and typeface designer who worked throughout the early and mid 20th century. He is one of the greatest poster-artists to ever live and he pioneered the art. There is a clear influence from the Art Deco period which he was working in. The elegant lines, blocky shapes and bold, capitalised, condensed text are what give that iconic period look to them. To create these stylistic posters, he used a combination of airbrushing and stencils. Cassandre liked to use diagonals in order to create dramatic perspectives in his work, often exaggerating the size of things to add more grandeur.

MOUSE & KELLY

Mouse and Kelley, more formally known as Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley were a duo of artists, most recognisable for their psychedelic posters of the 1960's and 1970's, particularly their concert posters for the band 'The Grateful Dead'. The pair took heavy influence from the Art Nouveau movement, most notably Alphonse Mucha and Edmund Joseph Sullivan. They often stole artworks from others and reworked them into their own designs. Their work usually features a multitude of vibrant colours and intricate designs which I think personally is too much, particularly when there's type involved too, it becomes hard to read and at times difficult to even distinguish the imagery.

Above are a selection of images similar to what I've had in mind for this project since being given my band name. My initial thought was always to go for a rustic Old-Western look, almost stereotypical of old 'wanted' posters or the classical wild west film posters from the 60's.

In the build up to my final piece, I've chosen some of the best ones from my quick sketches and just developed them a little further, adding colour and texture to see how they all look in a semi-finalised way. My personal favourite is most definitely the one with the Sherriff's car on it, so I took that a step further and did a slithgly bigger drawing (on the right) and achieved an aged look by tea-staining it and letting it bleed in to the ink. It obviously requires a bit more texture to add to that classic western look I'm trying to achieve though, so I'll have to experiment with some mark making techniques in photoshop.

One of the best techniques for adding texture to an image involves downloading pre-existing PNG's from online. There are many different textured patterns, however the way in which you apply them on photoshop can have a drastically different effect. I tend to use either 'screen' or 'luminosity' blend modes to get the best looking results, however there's a whole range of them to choose from in the layers panel. On the right is an example of this using the 'Screen' blend mode;

Below, I've included some more variations of the blend modes using the same textured PNG;

Blend mode; Multiply

Blend mode; Luminosity

Blend mode; Colour Dodge

Another simple, but often effective for creating texture in Photoshop is using the built-in 'Camera Raw Filter' where you can adjust the sliders for almost every aspect of the image, changing colours, details, contrast etc. I've done a couple of quick examples using one of my drawings just to see how it can help accentuate the details and textures in things such as a scanned image.

Original (no edits);

With increased texture & clarity;

With increased noise;

band poster (end result)

The above is my end result of the digital illustration briefing, this being a poster for my band's assigned name "Plastic Sheriff's Badge". I've tried to stick to the country theme I've been working with by recreating that classic old-western look, but mixing it with a touch of the 70's to give a more modern spin on it. I'll admit, the car looks somewhat out of place, however it's not meant to be an original 1800's style advertisement, but a late rendition of what became a popular style, particularly back in the 70's when lawless wild-west movies were at a peak. I wanted it's appearance to be kind of cheesy and to look easily made, because the idea was for my band to be a more niche, local group rather than a household name. Aside from that, the overall composition and choice of typeface is well coordinated and the textured mark making has worked a treat, if a little over done possibly.

I've assembled some extreme close-ups of the various textures I added to my final poster. As you can see I've tried to replicate several different techniques, thinking about if it really was a hand-made poster, how those marks would be made and how it may deteriorate over time.

I've tried to replicate a printed look with the imagery by adding that classic grain that you get with low-quality printers. Also, it's very subtle, but there are some sections of horizontal lines made to look almost as if the printer has failed or may be running low on ink. You'll notice that some areas look blurry or liquefied; I've done that as if to show that maybe the poster has been out in the rain and the water has bled with the ink, or something has potentially been spilled on it leading for the ink to bleed.