Tasks 7-12. Studio Brief 2 - What is image making?

TASK 8
Composition

Thumbnails of different compositions that include figure and scale still to do with my chosen subject 'The History of Rap'. I chose to include an old man listening to a boombox on the streets of Brooklyn.

Final outcome

I drew my image out as a final in fine liner then scanned it in and coloured on Photoshop. After doing this I felt i needed to add more line work so I printed it, drew into it a little more and scanned it in to colour once again. In terms of composition I am not really happy with it. I am happy with the colours used and the application; but considering this work was focusing on composition I think maybe another of the options from my thumbs would have worked better.

I am struggling to get my head around composition a little bit. 

TASK 9 

Composition Part 2 - Frame : Me, a butterfly and an elephant

Thumbnails how I can encorporate myself into the image as this is quite difficult. I thought about doing a build up of me standing on the elephant and the butterfly standing on me. Then thought about the elephant blowing out a butterfly from it's trunk for me to catch in a net. Or the elephant, wrapping me in it's trunk and I am wearing a butterfly tshirt. In the end I came up with the idea of the butterfly legs being cables to hold up the elephant, and in turn the butterfly is being held up by my hand. However, this did not encorporate enough of myself. I transformed the legs and hands into human ones and included the elephant wearing a bikini to add more of a human feel. In order to create interesting composition I wanted the piece to be tall and stretched upwards.

I then coloured the image on Photoshop using a series of greys. 

I quite like this piece because it is playful and something quite simplistic, and unrealistic purely using my imagination which was quite challenging. 

I do feel the composition could be more exaggerated and stretched out. I could have played with scale a little bit more as well maybe making the butterfly larger and the elephant really small with extra long legs to make it a little more playful

TASK 7 3D & Lens

My Mutant photo

We had to produce an illustration of ourselves as mutants to show how you can create illustrations without drawing. I decided to emphasise an area of my face in order to transform myself. As we are on a drawing course I find it ironic that every morning I draw my eyebrows on with eyebrow pencil to darken them. I thought it would be quite funny to create a huge monobrow in homage to the artist Frida Kahlo. However, I did forget about it and nearly went out in public with it on! I really enjoy make up and completely transforming your face sometimes, especially around halloween. 

Make up artistry was a field that I had considered going into when I was younger and is still definitely an art form that we should consider more of and appreciate. I often practise on my friends face painting. Here are some examples of times I have painted on faces to transform them (mostly for fancy dress purposes) :

In college I explored working with latex as I was interested in film make up artistry and maybe this is something that I could consider in future projects, a 3D outcome.

TASK 10
Viewpoint & Depth

Creating drawings that include depth to take to an etching workshop.

For this one I forgot I was supposed to be basing my drawing on my subject 'The history of rap'

Based on the streets of Brooklyn in 1980 where rap and hip-hop were at it's peak

Tubes in Brooklyn - I feel this has the most depth and would be easiest to etch as theres less detail

Started on this one but got bored of it : someone being arrested in Brooklyn for striking

ETCHING

I took my image of the streets of Brooklyn to etch onto a plate with a needle. I felt the line work would work most sucessfully with this technique, and make for an interesting piece. Though I know that there are better images that represent depth, I wanted to see this image in particular as an etching. 

PLATE

OUTCOME

I dont think my etching came out as sucessful as I'd liked but it was interesting to see a different way of working and is definitely something I will consider in the future. 

TASK 11 

Line of Sight - Transport

I became interested in the idea of bike rides - but funny bike rides, like family bikes at a holiday park or pets being in the basket of bikes. I was wondering how I could make this funny. I then thought of encorporating animals into the image riding the bikes themselves or getting a lift off a human. These made for quite humorous images and so I tried to adapt them. 

THUMBNAILS

Tried to adapt the initial image of the girls riding the bike to drawing a dog over the top

GIVE A GOAT A LIFT. I like this idea the most

I started off using pencil then building layers on top of this with fine liner to plan out my composition.

Draw and draw again

Digital drawing on illustrator 

I was pleased with how I put this final piece together and the time spent over it but I do feel as a composition it does not really work. Looking at it now, I don't think it shows a very interesting line of sight. There's a clear sense of direction, but I feel I could have adapted this making it more interesting by maybe changing it to a landscape piece with more twists and turns in the road. I should have considered this when thumbnailing.

TASK 12
Colour, Value & Notan

My notes:
Value picks out the key elements of an image, defines a foreground and background, creates focal points. Value sets the mood, completes your image. It gives one element more presence, to make it stand out, and is more dynamic.

Notan : Theory in Japanese ink making of how light and dark create harmony and beauty. Simple notan structure creates composition.
Two value Notan : dark and light shapes
Three value Notan : mid tone, dark and light (highlights).

Colour palettes

I found this website interesting because sometimes I find it hard to create my own colours for illustrations. Because I am stuck in a rut of drawing things realistically, I usually present the colours that way too. This is something that I need to work on perhaps by using a limited colour palette or researching colours that compliment one another more.

Complimentary colours are the opposite colours on the spectrum:
Red & Green
Blue & Yellow


Thumbnailing ideas

Reference

Final design ready to colour

Final outcome

I am rather pleased with the outcome for this as I really challenged myself to create something with depth, line of sight and include value with my colour choices. I decided to use a restricted palette of just grey and created many layers on Photoshop. I used layers for different opacities of grey - 10% 30% 50% 80% and 100%. I started off colouring the whole piece with 10% and then using the 30% for the trees in the background then for the foreground imagery using higher opacity for darker shades. I coloured the balloon in red to stand out and create a focal point that everything in the image lead to. Looking at it now I think I maybe should have placed the balloon a little bit higher up. I think the composition works well because with it being so narrow your eye leads up the page but everything in the image hints to making your eye go right towards the balloon. For example the pathway, the arm and branches on the trees. I think as a final image this brings together everything that I have learnt within Visual Language so far which is what I wanted to do. I really challenged myself with this one and spent a lot of time researching and thumbnailing to try get it right.