OUIL404: Collage

Collage - Robots/Future Technology themed booklet

Matt showed some collage artists and Anthony Zinonos was one of them who I had forgotten all about. He uses torn pieces of paper/fabric that become beaches and canyons. It's so simple and clever and shows how you can overcomplicate an image by trying to be too clever. I had some orange paper left over and used it in a similar way. I want to use colour in my collage because it can alter the texture and depth as well as adding a lot of personality and can act as a structure for the black and white imagery.

Found Images

Because I love collage and it's universal appeal I've been collecting old books which are fascinating and have beautiful photographs that can be re arranged and contextually manipulated.

Mad Scientist

Matt said making collage is like the process of a mad scientist experimenting to create a Frankenstein monster. I think I have a natural ability with collage arrangement and maybe this is because it is a medium that I believe will always be evolving and never fall out of fashion as anyone can try collage and nearly all results are at least funny or visually stimulating. At the other level they can be very profound and arrangements can raise questions for the audience that perhaps other media like drawing would struggle to ask as intently.  

Collage forces you to twist reality

Jump into an alternate universe

Images sometimes decide for you where they belong in the composition

Is it humour we usually feel with collages or unease at the unfamiliar?

It brings the inner child out of you

Scale, context, meaning can all be shaped into infinite different arrangements

There is a reliance on gut instinct for the final arrangement

Adding one image forces the image as a whole into a new direction

OUIL405: The Visual Journalist

Visual Journalism

Subjects: Evolution, Trees, Consumption

After talking to peers about each others subjects it was interesting to see how wide ranging the topics got. It was partly because I had little to say about trees but as a subject it got us talking about some really interesting subjects that happen all over the world. We discussed Japanese suicide rates, S. Korean simulated funerals and the best kick in taekwondo.

It highlighted the brief's possibilities for an interesting story to be told using the chosen subject as a spring board.

The story needs to be my personal viewpoint of the subject.

The story needs to be one that I find interesting and want to communicate.

Evolution

Incredibly broad/vast - What interests me about Evolution?

Could I let my process of making images evolve somehow?

Could I find out about the opposed view to Evolution? (Interview religious people)

Trees

I take trees for granted and don't know much about them but they are also ingrained on human's history.

Humanity's changing relationship with trees as we've evolved. Using forests for shelter to Amazon rainforest destruction. 

Consumption

Consumption of what? Food, water, energy, information.

I find the idea of consuming information. Unlimited access to information now is overwhelming.

OUIL405: One Week Map / Screen printing

Screen printing

It was good to experiment with mixed colours and layering and not worry too much about the overall design of the poster. It was really interesting to re learn the screen print process and I felt like I understood it better than when I did screen prints at Vernon Street on my foundation last year.

We mixed paints together and got some really nice, warm colours and textures. I like the randomness of mixing colours and not knowing or controlling what you get. You can also get interesting patterns by putting paint straight on to the screen. 

Screen prints can produce interesting outcomes that digital media cannot

I really want to explore screen printing more and use it with my drawings and collage. 

Experimenting with layers

We over printed onto the same piece to see what kind of effects we got and they were good expressions of our themes in the poster, aimless arrangements that worked really well. 

Overlapping gave 3D effects that hurt your eyes and the shapes of the buildings overlapped to form new abstract shapes that I think will be really useful for future briefs, especially if I want to illustrate a scientific subject which often have quite abstract concepts.

Screen prints can create effects through experimentation that are totally unique to screen printing and not possible in other media. 

  

OUIL 404: Line Quality & Mark Making - Robots, FutureTechnology

Future Tech/Robots

I'm really enjoying the drawing tasks and trying to apply them to the subject.

Exploring expression of line quality and mark making creates infinitely more ways of drawing a certain subject.

A theme or subject can be represented in many different ways when using different methods.

I'm starting to combing fine lines with rougher marks. Fine line drawings are given a depth and have more energy.

Fine pen drawings give a definition of shape and abstract pencil marks add energy/movement.

For my subject I've explored nanotechnology - the very small that we can't see.

I've tried to draw marks and lines with chaotic energy but also very measured lines.

There has to be a certain mystery to the shapes as it is obviously my interpretation and it's technology still in development.

Robots and future technology are associated with Science Fiction which I am not that familiar with but I've found drawing concept art of landscapes and action scenes really helpful for developing my ideas of what the future might look like.

I've focused on spheres as they are a common shape associated with particles in textbooks and I think are a good way to illustrate tiny robots/technology as we need shapes/symbols to picture the infinitely small.  

It's interesting to see a repeated mark gradually evolve into a larger, solid object and take on a 3D form. Adding shade and tone with pencil helps create depth.

Ambiguous, blurry spheres are appropriate for the tiny, fuzzy, quantum world

When a simple mark is built up or used multiple times they start to become something interesting.

Mark making development

Research concept art sketches for science fiction films

Look at illustrators who use a lot of marks and unique line technique

Read up more on concepts of nanotechnology/future technology in general

Use different media - more brush strokes, colour, digital 

OUIL405: One Week Map

Monday 

We spent the day wandering from college into the city centre and tried to get some photos. I thought it'd be a good idea to get some interesting photos rather than our actual route. 

Sound recordings/Photos/Videos helped me remember the day but we struggled to find a theme or follow the list Matt gave us as the rain hammered it down and we got colder and wetter. 

We eventually just wanted to find warm, dry places in the centre and did hear some funny bits of conversation but were happy to get back to college. We were quite aimless but went to a few places and got some good photos as reference. 

We managed to sit and do some observational drawings in the market. I was surprised at that how I capture people has improved. 

Tuesday

We got all our photos, drawings and objects together and tried to find a theme for the map.

Matt suggested thinking about the emotion and personal side of spending the day together as a group of three introverts. I personally find working creatively as a group difficult. I'm so hard wired to listening to my own thoughts and being a control freak with my work. So we decided to make this a theme of our map. 

Aimless, cold, lost

Not having total control of the outcome I found it hard to adapt my way of drawing to fit the style of the poster. Oliver's purposely crude drawings of the pound shop toy animals we bought was brilliant and funny and set the tone perfectly for the map as it was a slightly aimless process of putting the map together.

One thing I learnt from this was I have never really tried drawing in a self deprecating way. I perhaps have tunnel vision in my way of trying to 'improve' or get 'technically' better at drawing rather than just drawing simple images that make people laugh. I really appreciate how important humour is and have explored it in collage but need to see how I can use it more in my drawing.  

OUIL404: Mark making/Texture/Digital testing

Digital testing with A3 sketchbook

I wanted to do a quick experiment with some of my marks and A3 sketchbook drawings.

Below is the outcome. I used my mark making test as a sort of central focal point and used a textured section from an old photo for patterns to frame the drawing.

Digital allows a lot of manipulation of texture and scale but lacks the random, gradual process of drawing. I never would of come up with any of the marks and expressive drawings using Photoshop but Photoshop is brilliant for building around a drawing with patterns that would be impossible to draw

The section I used below is from an old photograph.

Perhaps a similar texture can be created using print processes?

Using one of the Photoshop tools does allow for some randomness when I selected patches from the photo.

The combination of digital and drawing works well.

Hand drawing the entire work would mean working out the layout and arrangement

Digital does speed up the process a lot but is it as exhaustive spending time sketching and planning the arrangement manually.

Using Photoshop does sometimes feel like style over substance but I want to continue learning how to use it in a subtle way and as an expressive tool the same way I would use a manual tool.  

OUIL404: We Built This City

Tone, Mark, Pattern

My house probably wasn't my perfect house but I tried to use the mark making techniques for the perfect house.

I find doing quick, expressive sketching comes naturally to me.

I seem to naturally draw very quick and loosely.

I let the mark making dictate the shape and structure of the house rather than draw from reference.

I liked the tone of the sketchbook drawings but it didn't translate well into the finished house which was kind of confused in that it was a mix of detail and rough mark making.

Matt said it's a harsh learning process of drawing that scale will change the way an image has to be approached. The small sketches have an energy and purpose but when working bigger, the marks and patterns need to be different in terms of technique and materials used.

My house was dwarfed as it sat on the outskirts of the city...

OUIL403: Book Cover group crit

Final book cover crit

The feedback from the group crit was really uplifting and positive. The illustrations got the best feedback and they were the successful part of the final cover apart from the title disaster which people kindly ignored.

Suggestions:

Could it be scanned in and edited digitally?

Using coloured or textured paper

Maybe too much white space?

Scanning in the illustrations I could of explored a textured background that was subtle. I feel the negative white space does give the images strong clarity with the vivid yellow and black but perhaps a more textured background could of been explored.

To be honest I spent so much time on the illustrations that maybe more thought needed to go into the other areas of the cover like the background and type.

It's possible I'm becoming to reliant on 'simplicity' as an excuse for not exploring more imaginative backgrounds.

End of Module Evaluation

OUIL403: Book Cover Final

Book Cover Final

I'm very happy with the illustrations on the book cover but I should have use digital for the type. This takes away from the overall success but I will learn from this for the future.

Spend more time on researching and testing typography

How will the type work with the image?

The hand drawn type is wrong for the tone of the book and illustration

The combination of colour and pencil drawing is the main positive I will take from the brief.

I want to develop this technique as it has a lot of flexibility and can be manipulated easily.

I've challenged myself to use pencil drawing in an interesting way and the colour allows the pencil lines to be more bold and expressive.

I didn't want the drawing to be a photo real copy but the small detailed section draws the viewer in and adds a bit of interest for the audience, focusing on the eyes.

Overall I feel the cover is a failure as I didn't put as much time into the typography as the image making but I believe the mistake will be a blessing in the long term for improving my skills.