Books in the post

Posted on July 14, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, Books, College, Delivery, Illustration, Research, Thinking, Understanding?, WritingLeave a comment

Books for college. A great many words arrived in the post over the last couple of days. A book called visual methodologies by Gillian Rose, illustration research methods by Rachel Gannon and Mireille Fauchon. Beginning Theory by Peter Barry and Picture This by Molly Bang. I hope the information in them will sink into my brain. Such a lot to look at and try and understand. It’s hard to take in so much, and this is just a small piece of the puzzle. I must improve my knowledge of crytical analysis. To go from descriptive to forensic. That’s hard. Generating new ideas and opinions without being opinionated. I want to try not to be cruel or condescending. To be honest and to use understandable language because some of it just feels selfish and snobbish. Hmmm.

Easy rider

Posted on June 29, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged College, Dream, Illustration, Imagination, Learning, narrative, Sketch, Storytelling, Webinar2 Comments

Part of the college course is narrative and storytelling. The webinar today was to write a short story then retell it in different styles. We had to use headings such as metaphor, dream, vision, retrograde etc.

For instance for the subject ‘dream’ I could say :

The day was quiet when a sudden roar was heard outside the door, a figure wearing a helmet and visor appeared in the room. I shall tilt at windmills on my steed he said. I will search out dragons. I watched as he rode up our street but as he rode the landscape turned to a seascape. He was riding a seahorse, his sword raised to kill the Kraken, but it turned into a wisp of smoke and he was swallowed whole..

From this you can see I probably don’t have the ability to write fantasy stories!

Playing

Posted on June 23, 2021June 23, 2021 Posted in UncategorizedTagged College, Life, Looking, Pareidolia, Pattern, Photo, Plants, Semester, totem pole? Faces, Trentham GardensLeave a comment

I sort of see birds, owls, flying out of these flowers? Or old fashioned rocket ships, or a totem pole. When you play with patterns you can find all sorts of things. I like seeing faces in things. I recently found out it’s called Pareidolia. We studied it during one of the semesters at college, the mind looks for patterns and sometimes finds them.

drawing of a profile

Posted on June 6, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, College, Colour, Design, Fun, Illustration, illustration MA, pastel, Portrait, portrait sessions, Profile, Sketching, studentLeave a comment

drawing with an ink roller

This was one of the portraits I did in a student led portrait group at college during the last few months.

The face was mostly drawn with one of those ink rollers you can use to blank out your address on letters so that you can throw them away without anyone seeing your details and stealing your data. Its quite hard to use because you have to sort of turn and twist your hand and press firmly to sketch curves. AfterId done that I added colour using pastels and the thick black lines were done with black calligraphy pen (most of these have run out so I need some more).

I quite like the strong feel to this. I am trying to find my illustrational voice. I have been told to look for illustrators that my work resembles, but I think mine is different? Is this a good or bad thing? I’m definitley developing my analogue skills. Digital work is more difficult for me.

Trying to think of a three panel story

Posted on June 3, 2021 Posted in Cat, Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Cat, cat cartoon, Cat doodles, College, Funny, Humour, Learning, Life, no words, Thinking, three panel storyLeave a comment

Rough sketches, three panel wordless piece. I experimented with colour and the positioning of the panels. Also could it be a front, side or top or bottom view of the cat and of it breaking out through the cat flap? Could the sequence change? What are the cats emotions? Why does it want to get out? Fear, adventure, looking for a friend? Lots of reasons, even sunshine….? Or a bird it’s seen singing outside… Oh dear!

Self portrait

Posted on May 31, 2021May 31, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Black ink, black pen, Collage, College, Drawing, Illustration, Ink, life study, post it notes, self portrait2 Comments

A self portrait done when I would have been drawing portraits of other students, but the server was down. Its a mixture of collaged magazine paper, watercolour paint, black ink and ink spray and post-it notes. I think I wasn’t in a good mood when I drew it. I had been doing the drawing session once a week for about seven weeks and then something went wrong and I couldn’t join in. Anyone that follows my blog will know that creating art makes me very happy, it cheers me up, (although I don’t look it in the drawing!)

My mind

Posted on May 19, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, College, convoluted, Drawing, Learning, monoprint, post it notes, sketch books, Sketching, ThinkingLeave a comment

I decided to use bits of post-it notes and monoprint and combine them in a tangle of colours. Do they link up with each other? It is a representation of my MA land. When you work on a college course there is so much to absorb and take in. Lots of information that needs to cross the book/ brain barrier via your eyes. The ever expanding reading list tries to force you to take in knowledge, but it’s not always easy to sift the relevant from the irrelevant. The clarity of words is not always there. I try to write clearly when I’m blogging, but if you have to take a dictionary with you when you try and read a piece of information, then you have to ask whether the author is being elitist.

Other problems with online courses are the lack of face to face contact. You can try and have zoom meetings or their equivalent. But it does feel sometimes like you are working in a vacuum. My desk is tiny, my pc and keyboard and screen take up about 75% of the space. It’s hard to find enough space to work in. My sketchbooks are getting smaller in proportion to the increasing number of them. So much drawing over the last year!

Heart and Love

Posted on May 17, 2021May 18, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Blood, College, Design, Drawing, fonts, Fun, Heart, Illustration, Love, monoprint, SketchingLeave a comment

Small drawing of a heart that I drew on top of a bit of black monoprinting. I’d cut this section out of another bit to create a negative space for a portrait, I’ll post that drawing later. Done during a student led session that just finished tonight. Part of idea generation for the illustration course I’m doing.

One thing I do need to look at is fonts, it’s hard to draw them accurately and I struggle to copy them, and I didn’t have a particular font in mind, just the idea the letters should be red, I might try and make them look a bit more like blood with a fine ink pen.

Spent all day fighting PowerPoint!

Posted on May 9, 2021May 9, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, College, Computer problems, Design, Drawing, Illustration, Learning, Need a rest, PowerPoint2 Comments

Today was hard. One of our college presentations has to have our illustrations in a PowerPoint. But my computer was playing up and instead of being able to use the tabs at the top of the page they were greyed out. So I started a new presentation, copied and pasted the work over… Then I had a break for lunch, and the new powerpoint would not work, but the old one would! So I shifted all the new work over and continued. I just finished it. I don’t think it’s well presented. PowerPoint gives you design options so each page looks good, but together it’s a bit of a mush mash.

I have got to finish off another piece of work and hand both in this week so I might be missing for a few days.

Imagined

Posted on April 29, 2021 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Characters, Collage, College, Doodle, Drawing, Fairy, Fun, genie, giant, Imagined, SketchLeave a comment

A giant, a genie and a fairy, (thus coukd be a joke). Pencil crayon drawings cut out to add to a collage I did for college. It came out quite well. I don’t have a decent photo of it so I can’t show you. It’s fun though coming up with characters and images from my imagination.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: College