Exercise Objective Drawing

I chose a shoe, more specifically my daughters shoe.

The shoe is something to protect your feet and give comfort when walking. I drew this roughly in pencil and then using a 0.2 fineliner drew in the finished lines and added some details like the stitching and cloth at the back of the shoe. 

Exercise Using Reference

Clothing for men, very muted colours, browns (light and dark) and grey.

Furniture, televisions and general interior followed similar colours, although there did seem to be a trend towards more colour including shades of teals, reds and oranges.

I started off with a man sat in a unique 50's style chair and then built up a room, including the well known 40's-50's style telephone and a striking clock from that era.

Exercise Writing a brief

One or more illustrations to show all the identification features of a bird including the wing feathers and all the identification features, colour or black and white

Exercise Exploring drawing and painting

I chose this cake that I found on pbase.com

Kids felt tip pens

Left image - Polo Oil Pastels, smudged out with a paper blending stump
Right image - Another neater attempt with kids felt tip pens.

Left image - Faber Castell Pitt Pens drawn on to tin foil and washed down with water and brushed on to the paper
Right image - Faber Castell Pitt Pens, using both the side of the pen and tip.

Coloured pencil and paper blending stump but it had very little effect

Same coloured pencils as above but on watercolour paper

Left image - watercolour wet on wet on watercolour paper
Crosshatch with an outliner 0.1 and 0.2, then washed over with watercolour

Pencil on paper

Exercise - Making a moodbard

For this I went with travel again and done a digital moodboard.

I seemed to have pulled a lot of textures and colours from the actual places of travel, sands, leaves, cities, water, snow. There are some amazing colour schemes and pattern ideas to be pulled off these few images. 

Exercise Turning words into pictures

I decided to choose the word Travel.

I used a variety of what I had around me which was Faber Castel Pitt Pens, Watercolour, Chalk Pastels, Pencils and Fine liners and some water for washes over the pen. I managed to do locations of travel, means of travel and items one might expect on travel. I went with things like vaccines, tickets, shells found on a beach, cruise ship and money.

Exercise Spider Diagrams

Using the 4 words Seaside, Childhood, Angry and Festival I created the spider diagrams.

All the diagrams came from my mind, I thought back to what I have experienced, seen in life and on TV and then some cliches around some words. Festival and Angry were very difficult, I suppose thinking about it now I could have maybe watched some videos and googled some images to generate more words.

Assignment 1 Say Hello

I started by identifying keywords to describe myself.

Myself
Calm

Interests
Birds
Photography
Art
Painting
Films

Inspiration
Nature
Birds
Other Artists
Quiet

Materials
Watercolour
Pastels (chalk)
Digital Sketching
Pencil

Already doing a very similar exercise in Graphic Design Core Concepts I wanted to try a different angle but inevitably the description of myself was very similar.
My initial idea was nature and birds and a possible introduction to my new found love of chalk pastels. An idea that would eventually be dropped to be replaced by watercolour, something that I am much more comfortable in.

I filtered through hundreds of my own photographs and sketched from the following photo:
http://www.pbase.com/johncostello/image/134871466

I explored the idea of showing the front of my camera lens surrounded by leaves and a bird or 2 around or above, I liked the idea but didn't feel capable enough create a version of myself that I would be happy with.
On the right side of the page I have myself taking a photo and played with the idea of including art materials but again felt it wasn't something I wanted to continue with. Below that was a doodle which I later coloured in with watercolour of an owl and a non pre-sketched watercolour of half of my binoculars - an idea I wanted to test just in case I wanted to use it in my finished piece.

Below is a continued sketch of my binoculars, I later came back to this and added a zoomed view of my telescope and a paintbrush.
I looked forwards to more inspiration and had recently been viewing concept art from animated movies. A recent film I watched called UP was fantastic and the concept art was just as good. The main character in the film I somehow identified to and felt the sketches of him showed his character so well that I wanted to include him. Just above the telescope was a perfect slot for him to fit.
I also really admire environment design for movies and really fell for the warmth of one of the scenes from UP.
These character sketches and environment designs can be seen below - all reference was taken from http://livlily.blogspot.se

My final piece was re-sketched on to 100lbs watercolour paper in pencil and then outlined in Pen & Ink, this is something I really wanted more practice with. A few small mistakes were made but something that can be rectified with some higher quality pen and a wider range of nibs (currently only owning a pen that is a little loose and 2 nibs). There is an overly thick line above the scope and around the left edge of the binoculars that is to me rather distracting. Same applies for some texture lines in the rocks in the distances and around the characters eyes.
Once that was done I added multiple washes and layers of watercolour resulting in the finished piece.

My main message with this image was my passion for the outdoors and some of my tools I use to study nature and my secondary interest in art, cartooning, film and the crossovers between them. The path and fence doesn't really convey any message but I felt adding that would create a more balanced piece.

Exercise: Getting the gist

I went with an editorial from the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/18/penguin-337-editorial
It’s a fantastic little story of a penguin that escaped from Tokyo Sea Life Park.
The article printed out and keywords identified.

Identifying keywords

• small grab big attention
• Penguin 337
• great break
• swimming serenely
• park’s 12-foot walls
• cute
• hardy and versatile
• skiing on sand
• vulnerable to warming seas
• heartening dash for freedom
• not to forget the soaring mercury

Summarising the key words

• great break
• park’s 12-foot walls
• warming seas
• dash for freedom
• soaring mercury 

I’m going to create an image about .. a cute but strong penguin breaking free from captivity.

I started with a google search for ‘humboldt penguins’ as I didn’t have one to hand to study. I used the images to sketch up their markings, colours and general shapes and movement. I put down loose random lines and then identified lines of interest to start building up some characters.

These are 2 digital sketches, no real referencing this time other than my character sketches and some poses I had in my mind, running jump to freedom and just plain running. Reasonably pleased with these although I found it difficult with the feet from the above sketch. 

Finished watercolour of the super penguin that jumped a 12-foot wall to escape with the tokyo bay in the background.

2 finished watercolours, top is the running penguin, the right side of the picture has a very subtle concrete background and to the left a warm orange representing freedom. Bottom is a penguin breaking out (slightly inspired by the escape from Alcatraz), brick wall background and a glow around the penguin.

Reflection

It was a very interesting exercise exploring ideas around a real piece of text, an exercise well worth repeating. I am fairly pleased with the results and did manage at last to blend watercolour tones in the penguin at the top of page marker 13, an effect I have much wanted to learn to do.

Exercise: History of Illustration Part 2

An illustration in the style of both artists

E.H. Shepard
To get a feel and idea of how Shepard illustrated I looked through a book that I had at home called The Pooh Story Book - ISBN 0-603-55012-6 - First published in Great Britain 1967 by Methuen & Co Ltd, reprinted 3 times. My Edition was published in 1991 by Dean in association with Methuen Children’s Books.

Sketches and drawings from sketchbook 1
To further get an understanding of his techniques I went about sketching some of the pages from the book above. I felt I captured both the character and the style rather well. The chair piglet is sat on is out of proportion.
I first drew part of an illustration from page 9 of the book of Piglet sat in his chair. Then Winnie the Pooh from page 26 and Eeyore from page 27 and finally Winnie Pooh from page 9.

Once I felt I had an idea of what needed doing I went about creating a scene of an old boot out on the grass and a small field mouse using the boot as a home. Small thumbnail sketches at the top of page marker 3, finished illustration below on page marker 3. I sketched out in pencil, outlined with pen and ink and then placed over light washes of watercolour. Overall it wasn’t too bad but I found re-creating your own piece in someone else’s style is pretty difficult, especially when copying someone that had perfected that style over the space 20-30+ years.

I used my reference sheet of Nico Marlet’s sketches and approached it in very much the same way as I did with shepard, basic pencil sketches to get the feel of the illustrations.
Page marker 4 having already sketched up my scene before on page marker 3 I went ahead and started sketching out potential designs. I had a lot of trouble with the perspective and angles so I took a sheet of copy paper and experimented with a sphere and cone to try and work out some sort of dimension to the drawings (page marker 5 of learning log).

After studying his work more and more I started seeing basic shapes and forms within his characters making it much more logical to process the construction, the crocodile at the top left of page marker 4 is a simple triangle carved and expanded in various places to make the crocodile. Taking this further I drew a very basic mouse sketch from a few images on google (far right of page) and built my character from that shape. I also experimented with some colouring and outlining but I don’t own any of the material Nico Marlet uses.
Page marker 6 was my version of the mouse coming out the boot in the style of Marlet. Not owning the right materials I went about adding some pastel colours over the top to try and create a similar colour effect.

Exercise - History of Illustration

Chosen artist E.H. Shepard
Shepard graduated from the Royal Academy Schools. By 1906 he had become a successful illustrator after illustrating editions of Aesop’s Fables, David Copperfield and Tom Brown’s Schooldays.
In 1915 he was called in to the Royal Artillery and in 1916 started sketching the combat zone for the Intelligence Department from his battery position.
He also illustrated for Punch throughout the war.
In 1924 he was commissioned to illustrate a series of poems by A.A. Milne after he was recommended to Milne by another artist at working for Punch. Milne was so impressed by his work that he insisted that Shepard illustrate Winnie the Pooh, Everybody’s Pepys in 1926.

Materials used
Shepard used mostly Pen & Ink creating black and white illustrations, some pieces included watercolour washes. He seems to use some sort of crosshatch technique overlapping his lines more and more to create depth, shape and shadow. This can be seen in picture 1 on the inside of the toads jacket from Wind in The Willows and very clearly on picture 5 for the darkest side of the tree on the left. His lines are very messy and almost seem scattered but they all have their purpose in the illustrations.

Old Fashioned? 
His work doesn't really seem old fashioned although there are some elements that do, for example Christopher Robin’s clothes. There is something modern and familiar over the illustrations and I believe it is because of the materials used, pen and ink and watercolour are still very commonly used today to create illustrations.

Contemporary illustrator Nicolas Marlet
Although not really an illustrator everything he does is a form of illustration so I felt it fitted the requirements anyway. Marlet is a French-American animation artist and character designer. He works for Pixar and is most known for his characters in Kung-fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon. He has a very unique style and his work is stunning.

Materials used
Nico uses Pantone markers, Col-Erase pencils and Gouaché to create his artwork. He has a very unique style and uses textures and a limited colour palette concentrating on using browns, oranges, yellows and greens.