W4 - Illustration Week

I have to admit that I'd been looking forward to trying out Illustration since we began the Exploratory Stage - it's the area that I thought I would specialise in as I love drawing and doing observational work. Over the past few weeks I'd missed sketching so the prospect of drawing taxidermy animals later in the week seemed quite exciting to me.

We began though by doing some experimental drawing that focused on getting us to use different techniques to draw so that our drawings loosened up. I found that not only did it create less pressure to get the drawings perfect, but it allowed me to increase the concentration with which I was looking at the objects. By doing continuous line drawings and by not actually looking at the objects, for instance, it made me focus on the form, shape and texture of the object. All of the techniques, like using your non-drawing hand or using charcoal attached to a long stick I think have allowed me to see and draw objects in a new way that's more definite, with less hesitation to making a mistake.
Below are the experimental drawings that we did.

Next we moved onto observational drawings of taxidermy birds, first with experimental techniques to loosen up again. These included not looking at your paper, just the bird, when drawing, drawing with your non-drawing hand and a focus on continuous line drawing.

We switched birds for each process and used graphite as well as coloured felt pens. Using different materials and thinking about composition by overlapping the images I think not only helped me to think about drawing techniques, but makes the image interesting to look at afterwards as not only a test.

Still using continuous line we drew another bird, for me an owl, with the aim to get the shapes and form of the bird in, not just the outline. After critiquing our drawing we changed positions and drew the same bird, critiqued it again (using masking tape to hide any errors) and then adjusted the drawing using charcoal. I really enjoyed these drawings as by using shapes the form and weight of the bird could be built up relatively quickly and effectively. Detail wasn't important to get the impression of the bird.

Next we tried working with ink, initially with brown ink and a brush to get the basic shape.

I liked working with the brush as I could get a soft flowing motion so the form was easy to put onto paper. We started then critiquing our work and correcting our work by drawing over it with black ink, although this time we used sticks to paint with to get more of a loose style, rather than delicate. Any mistakes could also be hidden by using collage paper and we could also add white paint for highlights.

 At the same time we worked on a second drawing, using the same processes except that this time we started by adding collage pieces to the page and then painting on top of them.

 I really liked with these paintings how the ink would run and pool, giving different, uncontrollable effects. But I think I was too precise with them - I should have focused more on the form and less on the lines as I think they look too cartoon-y, not realistic. I would have also liked to have started out with a darker brown ink as it was diluted too much to begin with, and consequently you don't get much definition or form created by the brown ink in the first picture.

The last painting that we did that day was of a bird, this time a cockerel, using the same methods of brush, ink and sticks.

Initially the cockerel looked too stout, but by using collage I was able to fix this. I really liked how the pressure of ink was eliminated by using sticks and collage so that you didn't have to worry about making a mistake. This allowed me to work loosely, and focus on form and shape, rather than the intricate details, which also meant that the piece looks like a cockerel despite the lack of time spent on it because the basic form is there.

Before we started the project we did a warm-up exercise where we were given 20 words on the board and we had a few seconds to pick a word and locate an object in the Illustration room that we thought matched with our interpretation of the word. We then had a few more seconds to draw this object and we did this 10 times. To begin with I thought it wouldn't be that difficult, but the increasing pressure to find an object that matches correctly with your word increased as the words you picked had less of an immediate association for you. I liked the exercise though as it did get me back into drawing early in the morning and was again used as a way to remember to be loose, so we used continuous line - one of my new favourite techniques. I'd never used it before College and now I find myself using it all of the time as it does produce a really nice loose, almost stylised look that quickly captures the object.
Below is my try: I started with pencil and moved onto liner pen, which gave a better, stronger line that was great for the quick drawings. I tired to overlap the drawings quite a bit to make the image more interesting which I think makes it look quite nice. Perhaps I could also try this exercise but where I line the drawings up in a row as I imagine then that they'd look a bit like Michael Craig-Martin's work.

Our project for the week that we started on the final day aimed to incorporate the loose working style and the use of the taxidermy birds, while getting us to think about the application of the image. We had to create a book (of sorts) where it's content had the theme of sequence, the content revolved around paintings of birds that we would do and we had to think how the actual book would fold or be constructed. This got us instantly to think about more than just the image we were creating, but also how it can be used in illustration and how it can be applied to different forms and themes to convey a message. After thinking about how we could incorporate 'sequence' we had the challenge to create 10 different folds that we could use for our books.
 

I tried to be a bit inventive with my folds, thinking initially about the look of the folds, not their practicalities really as the size of paper could be increased to allow a drawing to be added later.

Before we started creating the book though we needed to think about how we would include 'sequence' and how we would match this up with our folds, so we drew thumbnail sketches.

My first idea was to make a story book about the day in the life of a bird using a fold so that the story was printed onto the shape of the bird itself. I liked this idea, but it was really too ambitious for the timescale that we had of just a few hours.
Idea 2 was a simple sequence of birds that were in the room using a simple concertina fold, but even this required multiple paintings to be completed and the theme of sequence isn't really that strong here.

Idea 3 focused on trying to incorporate movement in a extended flip book style, so that the bird would fly down the braid fold. I think this idea was ok, but it wasn't particularly exciting to look at and the braid fold had the tendency to unwind and look really messy.
Idea 4 was a fan where a bird appears to be coming closer to the viewer the more it is extended out, until you turn it over and the image is extremely close up, like it has flown into your face. This is the idea that I went for as after speaking with Trudi she suggested this more practical idea over the (with hindsight) nearly impossible Idea 1. With this idea I tried to get the movement of the bird into the book, the sequence of it moving.
Idea 5 was just a fun idea really, as the reference images and objects that I would need to complete this I didn't have. The idea was about the life cycle of a chicken from egg to cockerel to cooked chicken and this was done on a hat shape, so when you opened it up, the cooked chicken would be inside. I thought that it could be about how manufactured this sequence is, like a manufacturing line we make it into something specific for our needs, like a hat.
Idea 6 was my fail safe idea to make a counting book on a concertina fold where the image of the bird is simply repeated with numbers at the bottom of the page. This idea was practical, but less original than the other ideas.

After deciding on our idea we moved onto creating the actual image that we would be using. The plan was to use the photocopier to create multiple sizes and copies of our painting, reducing the amount of work that we had to do as we were pushed for time. A copy of the image would later be spray-mounted onto paper, ready to fold. So we started by painting our images of birds that we needed. I only needed the one image of a hawk swooping, so using the same processes as before (ink, sticks, collage, but no paint brush) I began to paint the form of the bird out. But the bird seemed out of proportion to me, the body was too bird compared to the wings, so I took a piece of card and using the ink spread it over areas of the body, shaping it out of colour to get a better form. I really enjoyed using the card as it allowed colour to be built up quickly and in the end gave the bird a stronger presence than the same bird had had in my paintings previously (I ended up painting the angry bird again). By using collage as well to cover up areas it allowed me to fix any errors as well as made the image more interesting to look at. Plus thanks to Trudi, who was walking around spraying everyone's work with water, the strength and fluidity of the ink is different and the ink has run nicely down the image.  I really loved this effect and working on the wet paper allowed me to work even quicker. I thought that the water would completely blur the image out of recognition, but it actually made it easier to work on for me and made me focus more on form as the paint was too runny at these stages to add detail.

My final image

This final image was then copied and reduced down to A4 size from A3 and reduced down to 7 decreasing sizes ready for the front and back of the book. A collage background was also made and photocopied so that when the small images are added onto the front, they wouldn't stick out on top of the white background as the final image was painted on brown paper.

The collage page

To assemble the fan fold book the A4 image was spray-mounted onto cartridge paper and then on the back of this the collage copy was stuck, with the smaller pictures on top of this moving down the page and increasing in size from left to right. I had planned to do a fan shape, but Trudi suggested cutting the paper into strips and then split pinning them together. On doing this  again realised that folding the paper into fan would perhaps have affected the copied image, maybe forcing them off the paper and it would have been difficult to see the progression of the bird moving across the page. By cutting them it means that the whole images can be seen clearly.

My Final Book

The front

Close up of the front

The back

 Completed Book

The back

The front

 I really like how once the strips were combined by the folding pin the book looked like a bird's tail feathers tying into the bird theme even more.

I'm really impressed with the final book that we could make something so quickly, but still focus on the different processes and materials. Again I really liked using sticks and ink to get a loose working style and it looks effective still when copied and reduced in size. It has made me think more about how books and images need to work together as well as how working in an experimental way can still create quite realistic results. Overall, I've loved Illustration this week.