SEASIDE ILLUSTRATION

Sketchbook to 17/09

Brighton university assigned a couple of loose summer research projects to chew on in our sketchbooks.

Someone has to hold a gun to my head to get me to archive my work, but hopefully university will provide a bit of structure and boot me into doing it!

Some of the briefs I made an attempt to follow were:

1. People watching. I love going down to the sea with my notebook and sketching people I see. I need to start taking my notebook to different places, because I am finding that I’m getting people from only one real angle – behind! However, it is still really interesting and useful. I like trying to capture moving people.

“If you are not skillful enough to sketch a man jumping out of a window in the time it takes him to fall from the fourth story to the ground, you will never be able to produce great works.”
Eugène Delacroix

This has been the quote around which I have pivoted most of my live drawings.

2. Intense / Minimal. You can see in my drawings of the church early on in the sketchbook I created two iterations. One was full of colours, layers and textures -and I tried to keep to bright hues to fill up the brain when you look at it. The next page on the spread is a single line drawing in which I have tried to reduce the building to its simplest shapes.

3. Shadow. I have drawn a couple of striking shadows / silhouettes, and where there is still a drawing, I have endeavoured to keep the silhouettes and more basic forms in mind to create really pleasing work. This can be seen on the life drawing of the sitting girl with long hair in a bun – I tried to isolate the shape of the hair and I really like how it turned out.

I’ve been able to use my passion for food in my art. There was a week where I was hungry all the time – and always endeavoured to make something interesting out of the leftovers in the fridge. For a few days I found inspiration in creating illustrations of food I was particularly proud of.

You know, I am beginning to think that I am some sort of statistical outlier for the amount of garlic I need to properly enjoy garlicky food. I have taken to grating a large clove onto hot toast before making it into a sandwich, even if I cook the filling with garlic too. What was that tweet about vanilla and garlic?

garlic is to cooking as vanilla extract is to baking in that the amount i add to my food is guided by reckless extravagance and utter disregard, verging on mild contempt, for the recipe as written
Twitter user @ haragoochie

I think I’m digressing.

We have been metaphorically hit over the head with a wine bottle by our WiFi installers, who took two and a half weeks to tell us our order was as good as nonexistent. I am blogging from a cafe, and it looks like it’ll be over a week before we get any chance of WiFi in the flat. My small consolation is that I feel very important and hipster blogging in a cafe. There was a guy in here looking at mysterious graphs on his laptop, and another clicking through images of chest x-rays and taking notes on a pad. I am uploading pictures of mushrooms.

Virtual Life Drawing Class

This morning I’ve taken a life drawing class from the randomised poses at line of action’s website.

It came after first thing this morning when I drew a couple of poses in an untimed setting.

It made me realise I needed to loosen up, and anyone who’s ever taken a life class knows that there’s nothing better for your eye than the frantic pace of a proper class.

I was comforted when I was in this stage by remembering the fear and pain of all the students in my life groups who have to draw this fast. The panicked muttering is something very special.

I sort of hate this one the most, because if I’ve started a pose badly, I have to stare at it for longer. I will admit that it’s probably the awkward teen phase of the class for me because if I’m really struggling, it usually means my eye and brain are slowly clicking into gear.

You can tell I’m starting to settle into my element here. I will admit I skipped a pose I didn’t like the look of at this stage, and maybe if I was being a purist I would have gotten stuck in. But I stand by my choice… the offending pose was a woman bending over backwards and one look at it told me that even if I’d drawn it PERFECTLY, it still would have looked super off and weird.

Because the whole class was only 30 minutes, my longest pose was only ten. I have to say I was dealt a very good pose here, and with very hard contrast lighting (my favourite!).

It was only with this pose that I felt my mind’s eye really step back and look at the pose as a whole when my hand moved to create the initial shapes. It’s funny, because having taken so many life classes before, I know what mindset I need to be looking for. But of course, finding brain-hand harmony is a subconscious skill that needs almost constant practice and sharpening.

If I really wanted to take advantage of this zone, I should keep drawing 10 or 15 minute poses. But I feel just doing the class is enough!

Perspective Exercise

Today, I found myself practicing perspective grids. I have watched so many videos and tutorials for 2-point perspective, but have never mentally grasped it. To practice, I downloaded a photo of a room and tried to align the grid to it.

After a failed attempt to place the vanishing points way too high, I had a breakthrough and managed to visualise it correctly, like above. I used a black pencil to line in the shape of the room’s walls.

Next I tried to draw the bed in the corner but using the perspective grid as a guide, to create a sort of ideal conforming shape.

You can see it’s not exactly what the bed actually looks like. My theories for this are, firstly, that perhaps the sheets and duvets on the bed are warping the outlines a little. secondly, perhaps my exact placement of the vanishing points are slightly off. Below is, for comparison, a diagram in which I followed the bed’s shape faithfully – but the prism doesn’t join up quite right.

When I am in the presence of someone who will be able to help me with this, I might show them these images and ask for more help. Until then, I will try the exercise with more interior areas and see if I can refine my eye. Up until now, perspective and construction is the area that’s hugely deficit in my skill set.

French Holiday Sketchbook

While on holiday in France, I’ve tried to keep a digital sketchbook similarly to how I would keep a traditional one.

It’s been really fun experimenting with the iPad to create textures like I’d want to have on paper, and I like that I have the freedom to import any traditional art as well.

One of the main things I’m trying to focus on is drawing buildings and scenery digitally, e.g. the library from Tourrettes. I really feel like my eye is improving with this sort of practice as well!

Adding textures to flat colour has been an exciting learning curve- I was surprised to find that my long-time favourite colouring brush for flat colours, Blackburn, is also a fantastic light texture brush! You can see an example of the texture in the leaves poking out the side of the library.

Bookbinding

Recently, bookbinding has become a massive part of my life. I keep meaning to blog about it!

After binding quite a few books for myself and friends, I listed some on eBay as well. I also emailed Court Barn Museum in Chipping Campden about them – I didn’t expect anything, I just felt like I owed them an update after my exhibition with them got cancelled.

They got back to me and have since started selling my sketchbooks at their museum! They all really appreciate the work that goes into them. It’s a huge thing to have as work experience.

Above are two sketchbooks I finished work on today, to be posted to friends who have bought them on order. I have seven more in the works that simply need binding, but I plan to get them set up on Etsy when I find the time!

Finally, please look at the shop on this website for details on how to get a sketchbook if you’d like one.

Fashion Illustration

Over my holiday in Cornwall, I rekindled a love for making full body fashion illustrations in Procreate.

I’m attracted to these illustrations for a few reasons. I like the bright colours I can use, and pretty women are one of my all time favourite illustration subjects. They also do well thematically when posted to Instagram, which I try to curate with lots of similar content.

This was inspired by the bushes bursting with hydrangea spotted along most of the roads in Cornwall. They range from bright magenta to deep blues and there are lots of pastel colours and whites too! I fell in love with them and made them into an outfit.

I’m especially happy with this one, because you can see I’m experimenting with style a little more. The use of the HB pencil tool means my art can look a little more sketchy, and it also forces my lineart to be thinner because of the pencil’s limitations.

My process is similar with each of the illustrations. I find a reference (or references) for the clothes, hair and possibly pose of each girl. I upload them all into Procreate and create a sketch with however much of my own creative license I want as well.

I tend to colour with pretty limited colour palettes because those are the most reminiscent of basic printing, e.g. Lino printing and screen printing. It gives it a 50s – 70s feel in a way, when the fewer colours on a printed image, the more cost effective it was to mass produce.

Animating for a Podcast!

Over the weekend, my friend from University (Ben) connected me with the creator of a podcast called The Average Podcast. They wanted an animatic to accompany some of the best audio each week, and Ben said the work really didn’t agree with him.

I created an example of the work I’d be able to make and Alfie, the creator, loved it! And I really enjoyed making it. Doodling each frame is exactly the sort of work I enjoy the most – and there’s a lot of creative license. I’m so pleased that my interpretation of their audio has pleased them.

In terms of what I’m doing, it’s a challenge. I’ve made animatics in the past for myself, but never on the iPad. I found a small app that lets me do pretty much exactly what I need to in terms of stringing frames together in time with the audio.

Next time, I think I’ll split up the shots on the editing app and edit those finished videos together. Whenever I needed to tweak something in the first half, for example, the whole rest of the video jiggled out of sync with the audio. This created unnecessary work for myself.

I will link the YouTube video when Alfie posts it onto his channel as well.

I’m so excited to have the possibility of consistent work doing exactly what I love the most! If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you there was almost no chance it could happen at all. It’s also invaluable experience to get more similar work.

Letter Writing Illustration

Letter writing is really interesting to me. Over lockdown, I’ve been writing letters to two university friends I miss.

When I was researching my Final Major Project, I also fell in love with an essay about the significance of letter writing and physical tokens sent in letters, such as flowers, in one Dutch family in the 18th Century (I think!).

I was inspired to create an illustration that’s been heavily experimental – playing with effects and ideas.

I might create more work along this line. I feel like the textures and colours in the trail behind the letter were very successful, but that the lineart of the letter itself could be a little thinner and perhaps a different colour.

Polyline Portraits

Yesterday, I was experimenting with single line portraits. These are excellent practice because it forces you to draw fast and freely – more of a test of the eye than normal sketches.

When I finished the line, I paused and the Procreate software is programmed to snap into a straight-edged shape, or a polyline. The result transformed the portrait algorithmically into a jagged, warped version of my line work.

The reason I like these is that it’s partially influenced by my hand and my choices: I choose which portrait to draw and the lines are all mine. However, it’s also partially down to chance and the software: in altering the lines, it creates something neither me nor the program would ever have created on our own.

Here are the first two I’ve finished – they only take a few minutes each so hopefully I will create a series soon.

The addition of the polyline block silhouette behind the lines helps create contrast and it makes the composition better in my opinion.

Stressful Morning Illustration

This morning couldn’t have been much more stressful. I woke up at Jamie’s house (Jamie is my boyfriend and we’d been visiting his brother).

I thought I’d make a nice breakfast for everyone since I was the first one up, so I headed downstairs and put some bread rolls in the oven while I prepared ingredients for a fry-up.

About five minutes in, the oven starts leaking smoke. When I opened that oven, I filled the whole ground floor with the most acrid smoke you can imagine. Not my oven, so I assume I’ve somehow massively buggered up the rolls.

It turns out that Jamie’s brother had, in cooking while his parents are away, cooked sausages on a tray with holes in it. There was a veritable oil swimming pool at the bottom of the oven which had burnt terribly.

It’s going to take a good cleaning and the world will return to normal, but the heart attack that gave me was not ideal. Ces’t la vie. It was inspiration for an illustrated comic I really quite like.