Visual Diary – Fashion Police

Yesterday I was on FIRE. I just drew and drew and drew.

This was the illustration I was so excited about making yesterday. The CLASSIC pulling-down-the-gym-shorts scene. I fished my dip pen out of the bottom of my bag to find it bent and broken, so was forced to use a brush to line this despite it being quite small.

This was a delight to draw: designing young, teenage Ludwig as shorter than Drake, with bigger, fluffy hair. Designing teenage drake as thin as a stick before he puts any muscles on after puberty. This is such a mind scramble, because this is how I used to draw them, when I was that age. They age realistically because I’ve just had them since I was about thirteen and I draw them based on who I am and who I see.

You can see I’m getting a bit excited about Antonia’s 80’s hair. I googled 80s men’s fashion and nearly threw up over the laptop keyboard. Some of these clothes are inexcusable. People get romantic about the 80’s, but some of those sleeves would take an easy nine down to a rough seven.

I can tell what you’re thinking, close readers. Ah, Gemma, didn’t your dip pen break? The answer is yes, and I went out into the Laines to Pen to Paper specifically to make this Breakfast Club character trope illustration. I bought three nibs, but a Crown nib is definitely the most natural to me (I think my old nib was a crown too, and ink comes from it readily rather than me having to do any fighting or scraping the paper).

Anyway. Absolute whirlwind of activity. I realised at half past four that I was sitting in a dirty, dimming flat, and Jamie was due home soon. I whacked the tunes on full in my ears, powered through the washing up, folded clothes, put away a bunch of art supplies, and Jamie came home to a clean flat. Whew!

Visual Diary – Sorry Fellas, She’s Mine.

More weird science AU work. I’m obsessed with Techo being as gay as the fourth of July but playing the part to teach Drake and Ludwig life lessons about themselves. And a good thing too, because Drake is wondering why he’s not feeling anything with his arm around a gorgeous woman. And why his heart skips sometimes when he’s close to Ludwig.

Anyway, he’s still posturing here, mostly to the jocks looking at him but partly to himself too.

Visual Diary – They’re Lunatics,

but I’m going to have to go out there and join them, aren’t I?

Going back to my roots and making art based on the principle, what will I actually enjoy making? How can I get my idea out with it feeling as little like a chore as possible? And the answer to that question right now is, as usual, HB pencil.

It’s not finished but it is coloured. I threw an orange soft light clip layer over the characters to bring an interesting interaction between the blue background and the life in the people. They’ve had weird days. They’re getting their anger out. Techo joins in immediately.

Damp – Mould and Emails

During the group tutorial, I saw that Alice had used monoprinting to create some of her background. It was effective in her piece, but it was perfect in terms of creating a dirty, mouldy atmosphere. Considering that some of my feedback was to find a way to make the mould more sinister, and to see if I could make it “creep”, today’s experiment was monoprinting.

I worked over the same piece of paper and then registered it underneath the tripod each new layer I created. I worked with dark green and then black towards the end, and the textures layer up to create a claustrophobic, dirty, full-on piece.

Jamie has been around for a few days, and did me the favour of taking a couple of pictures of me at work.

I wrote up six emails, mimicking the pointless back-and-forthing with an apathetic Landlord via an apathetic Lettings Agency. I then took screen grabs of these and overlaid them on Linear Burn so that the background became transparent. (Darken worked, but Linear Burn had a better opacity.) I learned how to crop images, and copy-pasted the shots with a crossfade and cropped everything but “Kind Regards”.

Visual Diary – She’s Alive!

More Weird Science content. I’m actually loving this, having to pull myself away from it to keep doing Uni work.

Absolutely loved working with this silhouette. I liked using the lighting from the shot (a famous one from the film) to create a really simple suggestion of depth and scene.

This is still simmering gently at the back of my head and giving a good smell to my brain-kitchen, but as far as I can tell, Techo is the beautiful lady sent to guide a pubescent Drake and Ludwig through a mad weekend. I can sort of see Mitzi and Antonia being their bullies.

Bookbinding – Scrap Fabric Sketchbook

I burst through the door of bookbinding at 4pm yesterday after a long day of working in the Studio and announced to Helen that I had to sew a text block immediately or I would explode.

She had some good big offcuts I’d been waiting to use and throughout the afternoon I chipped away at the project until I had a finished book. This will be Martha’s Christmas present, and I chose all the scraps of fabric that reminded me of her. Martha, if you’re reading this, CLICK. AWAY.

I learned a lot while sewing this, which is just so mad, considering that this is a format I’ve now done a few times! I found running the thread through beeswax a few times doesn’t only help lubricate the thread a bit, it also loosens it up right off the spool. Otherwise, it twists itself into tangles and kinks trying to spiral back into loops.

If I bound this again, I would use thinner thread on the signatures, and possibly sew even more signatures on. A book this big needs width to give it presence. I was surprised by how well the fabric stuck on using heaps of my tacky glue, because I was really expecting that to be the miserable part. Even the thickly knitted white flowers stuck quite easily.

The green ribbon I just pulled straight out of my scraps drawer. I nearly laughed out loud, using something from my “scraps drawer”, feeling like a scrapbooking mum.

I’m loving using scraps or things that I have to hand for these books. They almost build themselves, and it takes a lot of the cost and decision making out of it for me. I still get to build something that’s unmistakeably mine (I can hear Helen calling it one of my “Gemma Specials” in my head right now), but using up old materials and giving them new life.

Damp – Opinions

I worked yesterday to get a shot of people voicing their opinions about the damp. Everyone likes to offer advice, and it all comes from a good place, but usually they’re repeating one of the very first things it’s logical to try.

The audio will sync with peoples’ appearance on the screen, eventually layering to create a confusing polyphony.

Things I like about the shot: I’m pleased with how the characters came out. I think they really sing, and they’re fun and graphic.

I like the pared-back green background, as it fits within the overall colour scheme, and I like the tonal difference between background and foreground (I chose this on purpose).

The boils are clean and crisp, and give it an organic feel.

Things that want improving:

The light is a bit fucky wucky. I only realised that my arm was getting in the light after a few shots (actually the final few shots), but it was such a labour intensive shot I just kept them in and did as much editing in post to get them close to the same gamma measure as possible.

The quality isn’t great. This was the only thing I’ve filmed in the Stop Motion app so far, and it has pretty well decimated the quality. It’s such a good program for keeping onion skins, but if I reshot this, I might have to sacrifice animation smoothness for crispness and just work with the regular camera on my phone, editing in post.

The two-rows-of-three was inspired by a few different animations that used this format of six effectively, but it came about in the tutorial that this shot might benefit from being more dynamic. I’m imagining a far more closely zoomed in shot, where people begin to fill the screen, perhaps with more motion. This would better reflect the stress involved in fielding lots of different opinions, or playing them back in your head in a moment of worry.

The resolution here is that I’m going to push with all my might to get the entire film finished, with a couple more shots today, then get the audio in. If I can get that sorted by about Monday, that will give me another day or so to refilm this shot. But if not – I will have had my priorities straight, have a finished film, and a bit of good critique.

Visual Diary – Why are we wearing bras on our heads?

I watched Weird Science the other day when Mikey bought it round. Long story short, I’ve been listening to Weird Science by Oingo Boingo for months without realising it was a film soundtrack piece, so Mikey set the records straight with a screening.

Everyone laughed when I said it was gonna be my new fixation movie, but I doubt they’re laughing now they realise I’m serious.

Anyway. You can see Drake and Ludwig are our two pubescent boys … Should I give them more spots? I only really draw them as 20-somethings and I could have more fun with their teenie selves.

Visual Diary – I’m going out there.

Can’t wait to work one or two of these up into a little coloured thing.

In late September, shortly before the court meet Drake, Mitzi takes everyone out in a rainstorm. Just to the road outside their house. The day has been close, and confusing, and tensions are personally running high.

Everyone follows her out, and ends up stomping in puddles, getting all their anger out, getting soaked.

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