Workshop: Drawing #1

On Friday we did our first drawing workshop- I don't know what I epected but since our rotations have been on drawing I guess I expected it to be like those, and yet they weren't: I think the workshop ended up being not about improving at drawing in an instant sense, or making nice drawings, which is much of what the rotations come down to; but interrogating how one draws or approaches drawing. Hence, the outcomes are hardly pleasing to the eye, but I feel like I learnt something, especially how to draw really fast and not care about the outcome.

The task was to draw from a film- Suspiria (1977), which is apparently a masterpiece but has that B-movie vibe complete with bad fake-blood and an over-the-top and repetitive soundtrack.

After watching a promo for the film to get a feel for the aesthetic, we did some drawings for only a few minutes each in panels, taking the interesting part of a night-time set with hues and glows, whilst also sticking to a limited palette. 

The nicer ones are those that pick up on odd details while also keeping the most important elements in to best get across what a drawing is supposed to be- the fourth drawing reminds me in particular of reading "Fashion Illustration" published by Portfolio, wherein as the clothes are the main focus of the drawing, in the same way models are very plain in real life, fashion illustration drawings need to keep the models as simple as possible showing some examples of where the model is nothing but line with maybe on block colour, only with a single detail such as an eye or a lip or a finger added, and the eye fills in the rest (something similar happens a lot in comics too, since the artist has to draw so much). I think being selective about what to draw is a very valuable skill and something I'd like to expand on, as for paid work it means the hourly rate is technically higher, for a simpler but equally as effective illustration.

The drawing without lines was also interesting to do as drawing in negative space, thinking about the black that would be there, is like looking in a mirror going backwards (for somebody who doesn't drive).

 We were then expected to change to a harder media, which was actually challenging even though I feel I'm well acquainted with things like markers, mostly because I'd missed the equipment email and only had the Sharpies in my pencil case. It's obvious that I'm more comfortable using line with hard media, although minimal line drawings using only 5 lines was interesting to think about. In the top left also, I didn't leave enough room for the eyes which were in shot, but I ended up wanting to draw the lips anyway, and the pink seems to capture the gaudy colour of the fake blood.

These were more about looking at monochrome. The one on the right was a black-heavy scene so again you had to think out the forms before working into it, as well as reject everything you already know about form given that the large amount of black onscreen objects and people blur into each other.

The bottom drawings were, by consensus across the workshop group, the most fun to do because it was a "flowing" drawing encompassing a section of the film, so we drew what we wanted as the film played. This meant the choices of subject were personal choice, and there was less pressure on creating a singular self-contained image and more treating the bottom half of the page much like a sketchbook page- experimentation and a lack of regard for the edges of other drawings, overlapping things and turning things into other things, etc. I found it easier to do in ink because ink, particularly brush pen, makes much quicker and more decisive marks.

The next four were done over a series of pre-prepared "washes", so the only source of colour for each image was essentially a surprise. They were of course still quick drawings but the purpose of the pink and green frames was to incorperate some texture, which was hard to do because of the time limit. I wonder if it'd be better just to get the detail or a small bit of the texture and again let the eye fill in the rest. I also switched back to coloured pencil for the last one because even though the contrast is better in ink, mistakes and bad form are less easily noticed with a less committal line.

The last exercise was definitely my least favourite- not least because we skipped films, and the tongue-in-cheek, always nicely framed Suspiria was too good against, I think it was, To Catch a Thief, in a scene where there is a essentially a lot of kissing and sexual remarks and not much else. I was also tired so putting in detail into what were now 1 minute shots was labourious and my pencil ended up breaking which made it hard to keep up. I've done thumbing a whole scene like this before, I think on Spirited Away, but it was less a colour study, more a thumbnailing thing for panelling in comics, looking more at composition and how what characters say match up with how they're presented. So part of me found colour studies somewhat pointless in this sense, but I suppose it was about getting somewhat impressionistic and more about note-taking than art.

To finish, while we're talking thumbnailing and storyboarding, I know someone who keeps some kind of archive of cartoon production work, so this is one of my favourite unused storyboard panels from Adventure Time:

(I wonder why they had it cut for the final animation?)