Category: Drawing Exploration

This weeks session was all about experimenting with different mediums to expand our approaches to image making. I tired lots of different techniques, some being successful and others not so much. I restricted myself to charcoal and ink as they’re mediums I like but feel I could expand the way I use them.

For this experiment I scrunched up a piece of paper and went over it with the side of a piece of charcoal. I really like texture and think it could be good to use as background to work over or scan and use as a paper texture on Photoshop.

I dipped a piece of tissue in some ink and used that to create this texture.

I particular liked this fragmented effect that I got by putting water and ink on a page then pressing it with a shiny fabric.

This was done by dipping string in ink and dragging it across the page. It’s a very abstract piece and as I spoke to different people they saw different things in the shapes. I personally see a bunny.

The next 2 experiments where done by randomly putting ink on one side of the page then folding it and creating a mirror image. For the first one I added texture after by using the same fabric as before. To me it looks like a turtle shell.

I find this result particularly interesting and can see many different things such as an animal face and 2 birds facing each other.

I put water on the page and a drop of ink at the top then held it up and let the ink drip down. I think it looks like a ghostly figure sitting down. This is a technique I’d like to try again and see what other results I can get.

This was my favourite technique I tried. I dipped string in ink and placed it curled up on one side of the page. Then folded the page and pulled the string out. It create this lovely effect that could be left as it is or worked into a pen.

I think this looks like flowers. I will try to incorporate this technique into my work in the future.

The final task was to use the techniques we experimented with and use them to create an abstract piece to represent the mood of a poem. I chose to illustrate the poem ‘The Wild Rose’ by Wendell Berry. I used the string technique in red and black ink and collaged over the top of it. I think I was able to abstractly capture the essence of the poem.

I found this session very helpful as it help expand my approach to drawing and gave me a few techniques to use for future pieces.

This workshop was all about creating a visual collage in response to a text. The task was to create a collage that evokes the feelings within the text rather than a literal illustration. We were given a range of texts to choose from and I chose The Memory of Place A phenomenology of the uncanny by Dylan Trigg. The extract is below:

I have seen this place before. It is three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, and I am standingoutside my childhood home. On the upper right, through the tree, is the room I slept in. Fromwithin that room, I would be able to hear a train in the distance. If I get close enough, perhapsnear enough to touch the door, I would be able to see the kitchen where I once burned myself.Dare I trespass beyond this door? In doing so, more than a spatial border would be transgressed.Crossing that borderline, I would risk conflating the traces of familiarity with the presence ofunfamiliarity, entering in that scene of a different timescale, and so producing a place divested ofits intimacy with my memory but now accommodating of other people’s lives.

I began by reading the text to understand the subject and feelings the text presents then finding appropriate collage materials. I found that a key feeling of the text was juxtaposition. There are many examples of this such as the past vs present and inside vs outside. I wanted to capture that so I made the decision to make 2 contrasting elements of the collage, the black and the colour. The colour is loosely held in the shape of a door and the dark surrounds it.

I cut up the collage and made a second version which I prefer. I think it’s more aesthetically appealing as the triangle shapes create a dynamic composition which draws the eyes into the colourful centre. We did a review at the end of the session and I got positive feedback with people understanding the emotions and message I was trying to convey to represent the text.

I enjoyed this session and found it useful as it taught me ways of visually representing the emotions of a text rather than simply illustrating it. I think I was successfully able to do this through my collage as it represents the bittersweet feelings in the texts.

We looked at a range of collage artists and 2 that stuck out to me where Peter Horvath and Hannah Hoch. I really like both of their styles and would like to try incorporate them into work of my own in the future.

This session was run by Anna Steinberg who also led one of the Documentary Illustration sessions. This was an exploration of reportage drawing which means drawing from observation as a form of recording. This is similar to what we have been doing in the Documentary Illustration. The first exercise we did was drawing each other around the classroom. This was a good warm up exercise as we were in a comfortable environment and there wasn’t much movement going on, making it easier to capture the environment and people.

On a few of the sketches I added a dilute water colour wash to things with standout colours such as peoples jumpers. I think this adds character and an energy to the sketches.

Then we moved into the Forum and sketched people there. This is a less comfortable environment but I’m getting used to drawing in public because of the work on Documentary Illustration.

I can see myself improving at doing quick figure sketches as I’m able to capture the key details. Also sometimes I caricature certain details/ features to make them stand out and really capture the essence of the person. I found it very helpful to see Anna’s reportage sketchbooks as it gave me a lot of ideas and inspiration. I really liked her use of watercolour to brig life to an image and her use of continuous line to create the characters and scenery. Watercolour is a medium I’d like to practice and improve with.

My artistic inspirations for these sketches were Anna Steinberg’s reportage sketches and George Butler’s illustration for example:

For the final week of figure drawing the focus was on shape and form. As with each session I began with quick sketches of different poses each around 1 to 2 minutes. I did lots of practice of this as I enjoy it and wanted to test myself by attempting to draw some complex poses such as laying down ones that I struggle with more. I used videos of both male and female models for this.

This is a page of continuous line sketches which is a good way of experimenting with shape and form. I’ve done continuous line sketches before but not for figures so this was difficult but overall I’m satisfied with how they tuned out. I tried to do sketches for a range of poses to push myself.

For this page I experimented with using minimal lines to construct a figure. This required me to focus of the negative space to see the silhouette of the figure and pick out line most essential lines. This was a fast activity and I think it was successful and not something I would have been able to do a few weeks ago as I wasn’t so confident with how to construct a figure.

I began to introduce colour to expand upon what I did last week. I chose a line from the figures silhouette and cut it out from coloured paper then sketched the figure in biro over it. I liked experimenting with multi figure figure dawnings.

This task with essentially combining the work from the last to pages. I would pick out the key shapes from the figure and cut these out from coloured paper. I like how the figure are simplistic but there’s still enough detail to make the pose pose.

Overall I really enjoyed the figure drawing portion of the module, I learnt a lot of tips and techniques that I can use. Also we used a range of tools and mediums that have expanded my own personal tool kit of sketching. I feel a lot more confident with drawing figures in complex poses now but plan to continue to develop these skills as I think it’s an important skill to have as an illustrator.

In week 4 we focused on colour. We could choose what colourful medium we wanted to use and I chose coloured pencils and pens. Colour theory is a very complex topic and while I don’t know all about it, I have a solid understanding of basic colour relationships and how to use colours to effect the mood of a piece. This diagram shows a range of different relationships that can be used.

The first activity was a warmup with lots of quick 1 to 2 minutes sketches, just focusing on getting the figure accurate. For this I just chose random colours as there wasn’t time to consider the effects of them in this task.

Here are a selection of slightly longer poses which gave me more time to get a more accurate sketch of the figure. I can definitely see improvement in my sketching from this session to the first week.

The next 2 pages are both more detailed with some tone and facial features included. For each figure I used 2 colours, 1 for the construction lines/framework and another for the tone and outline. I used a range of sets, some being different shades of the same colour, some complementary and some contrasting.

I really enjoyed this page as it was fun to experiment with different styles of sketching using colour. The blue one in the top left is the same style as the previous pages but with biro. For the pink one next to it I drew the outline of the figure first the used a purple pencil to lightly sketch in the shadows. The green one was particularly fun and challenging as I did no framework or outline and just sketched the shadows. The red and yellow one was an outline with the lightest bits shown with the yellow. For the one next to that I used 2 different co lours for the shadows and highlights. And the last one is a negative space sketch where I focused on the silhouette.

I really enjoyed this session because I love to work with colour and I’m feeling a lot more confident with figure drawing as I can see significant improvement from week to week of the module.

In week 3 of figure drawing we focused on tone by using charcoal. This is a medium I’ve used before and really enjoy using. The materials we used throughout this session were willow and compressed charcoal, brown chalks, erasers, a knife to cut the eraser and a tool to blend such as a blending stumps. One important thing I learnt was to add a mid tone background to the paper by roughly smudging some charcoal on the page. This way you can use an eraser to rub out the lighter areas and add charcoal to the darkest parts.

After doing some quick warm up sketches we had to complete 3 5 minute sketches of the model in different poses. We could use a combination of rubbing out and adding charcoal. Charcoal is a very versatile medium that can be redrawn and erased over and over without compromising the piece. This is something I began to understand more and take advantage of as the session went on. Even in these 3 images I can see clear improvement as I stopped drawing in such a linear way and focused more on empathising the light and dark areas to allow a figure to emerge from the mid tone background.

Then we moved onto some longer drawings. This one was a 15 minute piece. Once again we started with the mid tone background but there was more dramatic lighting as spot lights were added. To begin with we had to just use the eraser then after we could go in and add more charcoal and refine the drawing. The twist was that the lightest areas had to be drawn the darkest and the darkest areas had to be drawn the lightest. This was an interesting exercise and it made me really focus on the areas of light and dark. One technique that I think really helped to define the figure was adding areas of dark around the body.

For this piece we worked on a slightly coloured piece of paper to allow us to build tone around a on a different colour. This was a slightly longer piece, we did this one for 20 minutes. I started by using the charcoal to add in the darkest bits then moved into the mid tone brown to add in the mid tones and finished off with the lightest brown for the highlights. I really like this piece a liked building up tone this way and think that working on paper that isn’t white helped me visualise the tones better. Also I liked the rough mark making and the way the colours come to build a figure rather than a linear sketch.

This was the final sketch of the session. I find laying down poses more challenging so was happy to get more practice of that. This time I used the paper colour as the mid tone so only added charcoal for the shadows and the lightest chalk for the highlights. I think the was effective and I was able to create a figure by just drawing out the darkest and lightest areas.

It is important to ‘fix’ work one you’re finished with it to ensure that it doesn’t smudge. You can use hair spray for this.

These are 3 charcoal sketches I did for homework. I chose a range of poses including 2 sitting down ones to challenge myself. I used techniques that we learnt in the session such as adding a base layer and sculpting with shadow instead of using lines. I’m happy with the sketches and think that they show improvement as I am now using the medium more successfully.

An artist I took inspiration from for this project was Damien Goidich. He’s a contemporary charcoal artist and I really like how he uses tone to shape a subject rather that harsh lines.

For this weeks session on figure drawing we had a live model come in and used ink to create expressive and distorted lines. The style Sumi-e uses lots of expressive lines in ink so was a good source of inspiration for this work:

The first exercise we did was a series of 9 1 minute sketches of the model in different poses. For this we used a thin black pen. It was a good warm up to get us sketching quickly and getting used to the models physique.

The second exercise was particularly challenging as we have to sketch the model while he was moving. Sketching someone in motion is difficult but because he was doing a repetitive motion I got used to it and was able to make some sketches.

Another task was to just draw one side of the figure in one line in different poses. This was an interesting exercise as it made us focus on the negative space . It’s something I’d never done before and found it helpful as way of really focusing on a figure.

Just like the last task, for this we used black ink. We were given a time limit to sketch the outline of the model and fill it is with black ink. Then we had to fold the paper to make a print of it. I liked this task because it created an interesting print that showed a distorted figure.

For this exercise had had a slightly longer time frame to make for sketches from different positions in the room. I got to try drawing sitting on the floor and chair as well as standing by an easel. I found I had the most control when sitting on the chair but enjoyed standing at the easel because it took me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to be a bit more dynamic. I used a thick black pen for this and was happy with the sketches I created

This was an even longer sketch and I used ink and different tools such as a sponge and sticks to create it. Using unconventional tools is something I’m not used to but was surprise by how much I enjoyed it. I was able to create and interesting texture by using them. I will try to experiment with other tools in the future.

This was my favourite piece I produced in the session. The model stayed in one pose and we had 5 minutes to make a sketch and move location and draw again. We did this 4 times and I created this composition. I find laying down poses more challenging so I was happy to be able to see clear progress. Also I chose to do this is ink and it was the medium I was confident with and wanted to push myself to expand the mediums I can use.

For our homework we had to create 3 fashion illustrations inspired by the work of David Downtown. I used black pens of 2 different thicknesses and black ink. Unlike in the session, I used water to dilute the ink to create different shades. This is something that I thought was successful. I used different brushed to get different strokes and marks. This is an example of David Downtown’s work.

To start each sketch I did a very light pencil gesture drawing then began to build on that. Then I used to ink at to add in the details such as folds in the clothes and body shape. I started with using lots of water and built up to less. Then in certain bits I used the pens to add more detail to the figure, clothes and facial features.

This one is slightly different in the way that it was done with just with ink and water, no pens. I like the floods and flow on the cape and the details on the figure.

We were introduced to the Drawing Exploration module and split into 2 groups. The group I was in is doing the figure drawing section of the module first. We began the session more theory based work, learning terms such as Wabi-Sabi, and what makes something a drawing. We also looked at 7 considerations which can define and determine a drawing from inception to completion and engaged with drawing as a bio-mechanical process.

Then we looked at different pencils and why we use different ones. In particular we focused on 2H, HB and 2B as these where the only tools we used for the figure drawing we did later.

For the figure drawing we each took it in turns to model. Every sketch was done in under 4 minutes, forcing us to work quickly and record only the essential information. Initially we where given no instructions but later on we where told to focus on particular numbers of figures and sketch the scaffolding/framework first which helped to get the proportions of the body. Another technique that helped was putting 1 mark at the top and another at the bottom to keep the whole figure inside to make sure it stayed on the page.

Overall I’m happy with the outcomes from this session and could see clear improvement especially after using the framework technique as the proportions looked more accurate.

In my independent study I completed 3 figure drawing using the skills and strategies learnt in our session. I gave myself time limits of 15, 10 and 5 minutes to practice working fast and having abit longer for some to develop some details.

These sketches where done by standing/ sitting in front of a mirror and sketching myself. This was challenging as I had to stay very still and record the key information quickly. It’s something I had never experimented with and I think it was helpful as a way of improving my observational and quick mark making skills.