The primer task was to draw everyday objects from memory! This was quite open and emphasised working in lots of different media so it was interesting to test out a lot of ideas.
I started with an idea I'd wanted to try for a week or so anyway- a cross-section of a tube car. It ended up not as a cross-section because it was hard to get the perspective without reference but the circular framing still works well enough. What I didn't like was the colour scheme- I wanted it to stand out with an odd colour but I think it looks washed out and the pink doesn't really make sense. Nicolas mentioned that I really knew what a tube car looks like, which means I did a good likeness, meaning this communicates the idea very well.
I don't like this tap, the reflections are weird, and although wonkiness was what the project was looking for, but I feel it's not that good kind of wonky that seems like it's there for aesthetic rather than just making up a tap? Three of us in the workshop group drew taps though, so it was interesting to have this for comparison against how other people approached it- one of them had a much better idea of the shape, for example, but hadn't considered the sheen or reflections.
Scissors, in biro, which is a medium I like. They're not perfect (ever so slightly wonky and the sides of the blades don't really make sense throughout the drawing) but I guess I have quite a good idea what scissors look like, and I think the illustration is sharp (pun intended) and visually stimulating, considering they're just scissors.
I've always wanted to try drawing with washi (or deco) tape! I own a lot of tape and I've seen some really amazing stuff done with it. This was incredibly difficult though- I need an actual scalpel next time I try this, not just scissors, to achieve a better shape and sharper, less frayed edges.
Generic human face? I'm lying, it's Finn from Adventure Time but I sliced it down so you sort of can't tell (I think I have a reputation as a giant nerd for Adventure Time in my workshop group though so maybe I was foiled on that one). I really enjoyed being very loose with pencil colours on the first draw rotation, particularly with how the parrot came out scribbly but visually interesting, and I was wondering if I could recreate that effect on something more complicated and personal.
I then did a generic apple, which I feel looks sort of flat and comes in weirdly in the middle. Nicolas, however, liked it, and I can appreciate that it's sharp and bright, but I know coloured biros well and am therefore aware this could have been far better.
I then continued along that line of thought (I really like food and related illustration but I don't think I do nearly enough of it) with a pen drawing of a kitchen knife. I quite like using a brush pen so it looks neat in that respect but the perspective is slightly muddled- at the bottom of the knife, it feels as if it should be facing slightly towards the viewer, but the handle dictates one is looking at it side-on?
I liked the way the knife came out so I also did pizza, which I put through Photoshop between the crit and writing this post:
...Which came out OK, albeit with a sort of lazy background. Nicolas thought it was very stylised (he only saw the line drawing though) but I was mostly just trying to draw realistic pizza; however that weekend was MCM Comic Con and I'd picked up a copy of Sarah Graley's "Pizza Witch" so I guess inspiration from there might have leaked into this.
EDIT: I liked this piece and thought it would make a nice pattern, and I sell at comic/ anime events in my spare time, so this design became both a notebook and a cosmetic bag.
We also had to do illustrations of things we'd never seen before- we took this to initially mean literal items we'd never seen before, which is what I've done, but I missed the email that said it was could be something we've seen before, in a situation we've never seen before- for example, someone did dinosaurs mating, someone else did a squid attacking a lion, etc. I definitely would have had more ideas for that, but here are some of the former.
This is therefore supposed to be a Nintendo 3DS! I've seen a DS before but never a 3DS, not even on television. It's a bit wonky and the colour scheme isn't very well though out, plus trying to get the 3D effect without Photoshop was challenging. I have since learnt how to do this effect in Photoshop. I don't really like this drawing.
I had lemongrass chicken at a place I like called Aobaba in Elephant and Castle and realised I didn't know (or at least remember, since I feel I must have seen lemongrass before) what lemongrass looked like. I guess this drawing is OK, it does the job, though I feel the label is a bit tacky: actually writing what a thing is supposed to be in an illustration, when the illustration is supposed to do the talking, seems a bit of a cop-out?
I got really stuck after the first two drawings so I looked to the rest of the workshop group, and some people were thinking about situations from books, so I did Frankenstein's monster! I really love "Frankenstein", we studied it for A2 Literature last year and I kept my noted copy. I remember being frustrated with other people's copies had an illustration of the monster on the cover that I felt nodded more to the motif of Frankenstein's monster more than the actual monster from the novel. The idea of Frankenstein's monster was that he was supposed to be beautiful- he was the perfect being, Frankenstein's giant ego personified, but when he was galvanised, he was slightly wrong:
"I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful- Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrible contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost the same colour of the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips."
So it irked me all year that the illustration, although it was a nicely executed, was wrong.
We then had a drawing day in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which I've never been to before. It was really good, apparently there's a ceramics room I missed so I intend to go back at some point. Initially we just drew from the exhibits:
(Two hoods from jackets from the clothing exhibition)
(Thai Demon King Thotsakan dance mask)
(More clothing, from a punk outfit)
We then did some drawing exercises, for which I chose different room full of statues, namely working with "Samson Slaying Philistine" in lots of different drawing exercises so I could, as we'd later find out, draw the museum items at home, with no more reference than what was in our sketchbooks.
(An assortment of statues drawn without looking at the paper. I wasn't the only one who really enjoyed this exercise!)
("Samson Slaying a Philistine" drawn without looking at the statue during the drawing, only for 1 minute before starting)
(Same statue, drawn only with straight lines)
(Drawing only the outline, plus a quick sketch of the colours and pattern of the surface of the marble it was made out of)
(Drawing only the tones)
I think I put too much time into these, given we were supposed to do the all the exercises for numerous statues, but in the end, I had enough to work for, especially as my drawings from the hood etc were already detailed enough to work from- however that did make it very obvious when I was making mistakes working from my own drawings, as the original mistakes are added with more mistakes and it becomes very noticeably off.
We then had a self-led studio day, wherein we were to make a model based on a collection of our own stuff and that of the rest of the workshop group. Mine is a mixture of the dance mask of Thotsakan, a drawing of a door knocker and a drawing of an embroidered bodice done by two other people from the group.
I really don't think well in 3D, and I'm not sure whether that will become a problem in the future. I also try to keep my costs down as I don't have much money, which I feel sometime constricts my work. While this is in a way good practice as in professional practice one has to make money, so the less expensive the materials, the higher gross profit, but in this case the work produced is sub par and saving money is therefore counter-intuitive. However, I'm not sure this work would have been better had I spent money on for example, different colours of paint. This piece is bland, messy and doesn't do justice to the original drawing of either the bodice or the mask, making it an altogether bad response to the task.
The homework was then to create more drawings based on what we saw at the V&A, whilst also considering how we felt about them, or somehow demonstrating their purpose.
I started again considering the mask, but didn't get round to putting it through Photoshop as intended, which I suppose is a good thing as the drawing itself isn't that good, I just wanted to present the mask more dynamically, ie, in use, and was going to add dynamic colours and angles.
I then started looking back at the hoods, since they were the more successful sketchbook drawings, but they also weren't going so well- the "raindrop" motif looked more like an ink splat, so I abandoned this idea and using coloured pencils.
I started using watercolours since I've been trying to get the hang of some Aquapens I bought, when it occurred to me that that cliche "drip" effect might be cool to try. I did the yellow hood initially, and didn't like how it came out, only to do the red hood and overwork it. The proportions on all the good drawings are also progressively more off as I stuck less and less to the sketchbook drawings.
I then departed once again, eager to produce a range of work and not get too caught up on one idea, and tried some of the statue of Samson, in a fineliner wash. They're both wonky but again it was expected as I was working from sketchbook drawings- the smaller drawing I also feel I used too much water on, which meant it was harder to get detail in. The textures and high contrast produced by the media make these relatively good progressions from the sketchbook drawings, but also aren't particularly stimulating illustrations in themselves.
The last part of the homework was to present selected of our sketchbook items together in a collection, and consider how they'd be displayed. The only theme I could think of was "things that go on your head", and it was quite fun juxtaposing different cultures and time periods. I wish I'd thought about stylising this to make it more fun, but I was just tired by this point on a Sunday having drawn all weekend, and I just wanted it done.
We also had a workshop after the crit of all the other work, looking at illustrating museum spaces, sort of like this illustration by Marcus Oakley (I can't find any of the illustrations we were shown but Oakley was brought up). He produced fun, brightly-coloured and almost eclectic images featuring many individual items as part of a larger piece- here, a map.
The idea was to do this as a collaborative project, on the wall of the studio, as a workshop group. So we could all contribute whatever kind of exhibit we wanted, as well as attendees considering the museum and its collection.
The top drawing was "Frog Lord", a drawing of a sculpture made by one of the other people in the workshop group, Meera (their drawing is the smaller one). I essentially had a lot of fun with it, and the character design was already a good one! I tried out fineliner wash again, hoping to make improvements with how I used it, but this wasn't the case, especially since I was constrained by time. However, it was a good media to portray a marble/clay figure.
I also did some tiny attendees which I also enjoyed- I drew a guy in the group, Giacomo, looking bored. It was a very small drawing, to make the statue seem incredibly big, for hyperbole. I think it's a fun little illustration, if not messy and a bad likeness.
I also did a drawing of Meera chilling next to a giant bottle (I'm not sure who drew the bottle though). She was an improvement on Giacomo as she has better anatomy and the use of colour seems less messy and more economical, even though the drawing was equally ad hoc and quick.
I wasn't out of people to draw but Finn and Jake hanging round a museum seemed funny also, and what's more, looking at Meera's drawing of "more than 50 rabbits" in a Hirst or Koons type of installation seemed funny.
The final product was a fun endeavour and I enjoyed the mix of styles in the final collection. That said, even though we worked well as a group, I don't think the final piece had as much synthesis and an overarching oneness as with other groups.
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