TASKS 2-6 The History Of Rap Music

TASK 2 & 3
Drawing from reference

Looking into the rap industry I began at where rap first started, the roots of the music and the area in which it was produced. It began around 1970's in New York - Brooklyn & The Bronx. I looked at images for the area at that time that would reflect on the music made as I figured they would make interesting drawings.

I tried to use a range of media to create tones with quite a realistic sketch at first. Pencil, fine liner, biro and sharpee pens were used for this drawing of Snoop Dogg. However, it is very realistic and reliant on too much tone so I feel I need to strip it down completely. 

Line

 As this brief is about line drawings I wanted to experiment with simplifying down my lines and adding blocks of colour which I have done for this piece by selecting areas to colour in bold and leaving the rest in black and white. This will also look interesting on photoshop digitally coloured. I think the fine liner has worked well for this piece.

Line & tone 

I quite like these sketches because they have character and the lines are stronger within them they are less frayed and gone over, and more singular lines. I feel that I am becoming more fluent with my drawing.

I don't like how this drawing has ended up because of the pencil I used but I think I could still scan it into Photoshop and play around with it make it into something. The red ink has come through from the previous page as well which could be erased on Photoshop. I would like to see blocks of colour in this and maybe quite fluorescent ones to contrast the original image like yellow on the jumper or something.

 

TASK 4

Line, tone, mark & pattern

For this drawing of Kendrick Lamar I wanted to focus less on my outlines and how I approach my drawing. Usually if I were to draw a portrait of someone I would look at the shapes within the face and the blocks of colour, map those out first with pencil and then work into the tones and build up an outline shape of the head before going into detail. Here I wanted to focus on how I can represent those tones and shapes through simply using lines and dots. It was quite difficult and time consuming but I like how it has turned out and will practice more with this I think.

Same materials used with this drawing of Lil Wayne but I tried to use more of a cross-hatch technique to experiment with that for tones within the skin of the face.

Another quite realistic sketch here, of Biggie Smalls which I do enjoy doing most; drawing realistically from reference but I know that I need to learn to step away from my reference and begin to illustrate things myself.

TASK 3

 Line

Focusing more on lines I created a continuous line drawing of Fat Joe and I like how the messy lines create a sense of shape of the body and the creases in the t-shirt. I think this is more of a free flowing drawing than a really tight study of a reference which is what I like about it. It was quick to do and shows good line work because they are all singular standing lines I haven't gone over any.

I tried to use a range of techniques for this drawing of The Bronx. I started off with continuous line and then worked in some tones with different shapes such as circles for example for the road. I then used straight lines and cross hatching for the tonal areas. I quite like this drawing and would like to see it on a bigger scale.

           I have become quite interested in continuous line and the outcomes it produces so I figured I would keep experimenting with it. This is Ice Cube but he is unrecognizable which is what I quite like about this piece it works well on it's own rather than from reference.

Again with these 3 drawings just quick continuous line drawings and it frees up the shapes that I am trying to portray which is really nice. I like the continuous lines, lines that aren't supposed to be there lines that you cant see in the thing that you're drawing, but make for really interesting marks.

Drawing and re-drawing in different pens to free up my lines

TASK 5 

Shape

I struggled to paint out shapes in the face without adding tone and texture and blending my colours together so i decided to map out on acetate the areas of the face that were different tones, the lights and the darks and outlined them in a fine acetate pen. I then scanned this drawing and printed it out for a line drawing made up of shapes to create the face of the rappers. From this I used quite bold colours to create good contrasts between the light and dark areas using gouache. I am quite pleased with the results and think they would look nice edited on photoshop for a more polished finish. 

Here I decided to only use yellow and blue ink to recreate scenes from the streets of the Bronx

I really enjoyed doing this as it was a challenge for me blocking out those colours first for the shape, then working back into them with fine liner. I don't feel happy with all of the outcomes but I feel happy that the process was successful for me and something I was really pleased with. 

 I like this one below because of the composition, though admittedly it could be better worked into I quite like how it is a tall strip only including certain areas of an image rather than simply drawing from a photograph. 

This one below I feel did not work as well because the composition is not interesting, I don't feel it best represents shape, and I found it difficult to draw realistic faces over such abstract shapes.

Again I quite like the composition of this one below.

This one is one of my favourites because of the line work on here and the bright colours. I really like the loose line quality and how simplistic it is. 

I was very pleased with this image below how it came across, I think just using blocks of colour with ink and working around those works well especially within the trolley. Even the ink splash from the wheel is nice and a happy accident because in the original image they are playing in the rain.

 For this one I decided to change the background and just focus on the outlines of the figure as the shapes bringing them out in white which I think is quite nice especially for the trolley part where the lines overlap. 

TASK 6 

Collage 

I experimented on Photoshop using photos from the bronx to adding colour or flowers to convert the image giving it a more positive vibe which contrasts the reality of the violence in that period. I really enjoyed using these photographs to play around with rather than doing things by hand with cut out magazines. I think taking a striking image and playing with it adding flowers and things is succesful. I also took a gang of rappers and converted all of their heads into flowers, took the police and added boomboxes to their shoulders, and took a scene from Barney the dinosaur and changed all of their heads into rappers to show how it is childish to have rap battles and fight against one another. However unfortunately these did not save and I have lost the images. 

For this piece I was particularly influenced by Kate Gibb's rather colourful work and decided to just play around with the colours for this one and adding a boombox to the bonnet of the car just to make it more playful. 

Kate Gibb's work

For this piece I looked at the streets of Brooklyn and the crime scene and came across this photograph of police offers walking with their batons. I decided to change these into flowers, and then changed it to black and white.

I took famous images of biggie smalls and his 'crew' and transformed them into teddybears for a more positive image

This one is my favourite because I just think its very playful and gives a great contrast to the images we usually associate with rap. I replaced their heads with teddybears and then flattened the image, and changed the contrast and hue of the lighting for black and white as it worked better. I quite enjoyed making these pieces and would like to do some more of this in the future. Photoshop was a quick and easy way for me to collage rather than doing it by hand but also gave me more experience for future work to know that I could collage in photographs or materials scanned in.