Project One: Room
For this project we were tasked with drawing a room inside of our living spaces, but we had to include all four walls plus the ceiling and the floor. I used warped perspective to include all details required. To draw this I sat in the corner of my kitchen and drew as many details as I could from the room, such as the blender, fridge, microwave, e.c.t..
I decided against fine lining this to avoid potentially damaging the linework - a stray detail might ruin the warped perspective.
Project Two: Alternative Materials
Part 1: Makeup
I thought that some old makeup would be perfect to experiment with and was one of the first media I came up with to use for this project. I had made a version before this but I wanted to re-attempt it now that I understood the materials behaviour. To make this I used eyeliner, nail varnish and eyeshadow. I decided to draw flowers to link into the theme of beauty. Here are some close-ups:
Part 2: Grass
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I was quite proud of coming up with this one! I took some grass from my back garden and ground it up in a pestle and mortar with some water and salt. I then used the wooden end of a paintbrush to apply the "grass-juice" to the page. I decided to draw a snail to link into theme of nature provided by the grass.
Part 3: Sugar, Glue and Ink
I've seen some typographers use this technique online. With a bottle of glue, draw the design and then coat it with sugar. I left this to dry overnight before using ink and the handle of an old latte spoon to drip it onto the sugar. This was intended to be a sugar cube with "Sugar" written under it. I'm really happy with this! I think it went really well.
Part 4: Oil
As my dad's car has been leaking recently, we had some transmission fluid available for me to use for this piece. The oil spread out through the page rapidly so I had to recreate it in order to take photos. This drawing is intended to be of something in between a Wyrm and a traditional Chinese dragon.
The first picture is the page flat against the table, but as the oil seeps through the page it makes it transparent, meaning that there's an ethereal effect when it is held up to the light.
Project Three: Detailed Close-Up Drawing
For this project we were told to pick an inanimate object to draw in any media we thought was suitable to use. I decided to do a ring, one that functions as a mini watch but fits on a finger. The battery died sometime through the summer of 2020 meaning that the hands of the clock would be still for a long period of time, making it perfect for a close-up drawing of something small and detailed. I started using this shading technique during last year's Inktober, which had just finished when we were given this task. The watch-ring is silver, so I thought the fine liners would be a good way of showing shadow while also keeping true to the original colours.
Project Four: Detailed Colour Close-Up Drawing and Digital
Part 1: Detail Colour Close-Up Drawing
We were then told to re-create the previous drawing for this project, but this time to use colour. As my object was silver, I struggled with this.
I ended up using alcohol markers for this version, and decided on pre-dominantly using my collection of blues as blue is a cold colour and I feel that silver is also a cold colour. The face of the watch is yellow as the drawing needed a splash of a warmer colour to prevent the blues from over powering the piece. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out, however I prefer the first version to this one.
Part 2: Digital
Again, I traced this image from my previous versions of it but used IbisPaintX to create it. I like the effect that this way of shading had on my drawing - I'd never attempted this technique before but I'm very happy with the outcome - it looks very metallic.
Project Five: 3-D Drawing
Over the Christmas break we were tasked with creating a sculpture-esque drawing with whatever materials we had handy. Fortunately, I had some wire at home and a soldering kit! However on beginning the projects my wire was not compatible with soldering. So I had make do with duct tape. I found that basic silver duct tape looked clumpy so I moved on to using clear duct tape which was less intrusive to the design. So I finished the drawing!! Overall I'm happy with the result - It's meant to be a van as I thought that would be easy enough to keep to the required measurements. It was partially inspired by a drawing I did during creative industries week, although that was of car - this was inspired but the technique of building from a square.
Project Six: Single Line Drawing
I decided on doing a series of birds in flight for my project, I thought they would connect together well with a continues line throughout each page. I'm fairly unfamiliar with single line drawings, but I think it's fairly visible that I was slowly getting more confident with them.
Drawing Number 1: Great Tit
The Great Tit is one of the most common birds found throughout Europe. They're recognisable by their black and yellow features with a white stripe across their cheeks. They're also the biggest of the common tits, another identifiable feature.
Drawing Two: Common Swift
The Common Swift is a migratory bird that spends 40 weeks at a time in flight, very rarely landing for any stretch of time. They begin their migration as far west as Portugal or Ireland all the way east to China or Siberia. They have a remarkable capacity to remain in flight and can do so for 10 months at a time without stopping.
Drawing Three: Eastern Bluebird
The Eastern Bluebird is a thrush that prefers to stay in open landscapes. They do migrate but are usually found in North America. The males have bright blue feathers on their backs and orange ones covering their undersides making them very popular and easily identifiable birds.
Drawing Four: Barn Swallow
The Barn Swallow is another very striking bird with a blue upperparts and the trademark forked tail feathers. They are the most widespread swallows and are very beautiful birds.
Drawing Five: Puffin
Puffins are very popular birds and are a favourite aquatic bird of mine. They have rounded beaks and a classic black white and orange colour scheme that makes them seem like a fun bird. They live on the coastlines and live off of their fishing prowess.
Drawing Six: Lilac Breasted Roller
The Lilac Breasted Roller is a gorgeous bird. They boast beautiful feathers and are covered in around six vibrant and impressively separate colours across their bodies. They can found in Sub-Saharan Africa and prefer open woodland and savanna.
Drawing Seven: Swan
Watching a swan taking off is a very different experience to watching them swim gracefully along. They flap around wildly and it's such a stark contrast to their regular and stereotyped behaviour that it's an entertaining experience. I thought a swan would work well as having a single line across the whole piece.
Drawing Eight: Frigate
The Frigate bird earned it's name by being spotted mainly flying by frigate ships, as they followed the same paths as the ships on their migration paths. Frigate's have mainly black plumage with red or white undersides, they aren't very well known but I consider them to be very striking birds.
Projects Seven and Eight: Cubism Collage and Cubism Collage Realism Pencil Drawing
This is project seven and eight together on my studio wall. Pencil realism isn't something I attempt often so it was nice to try it again. As for the collage I made up the most of it with a few sheets of colourful paper, then added the detail with acrylic markers.
Project Nine: Self Negotiated Drawing
Jackalope Phone Case:
Graham B asked if I would put a design his phone case so I decided to use it for drawing. It took around five hours and he was very happy with it. I used acrylic paint markers and he put varnish over it to protect the art. I'm very proud of the result and I like the way the two blues work together.
Digital Wendigo:
I decided to make a digital version of one of my final wendigo drawings. I think it looks quite ominous, I focussed mostly on the highlighting on my wendigo.
Digital Selkie:
I was really proud of the pencil sketches I made for the selkie page and so I decided to make a digital version of these too. I enjoyed the opportunity to experiment freely with colour and shadow and am proud of the results.
Digital Cecaelia:
'Cecaelia' is the modern day umbrella term for a mythical creature originating in the folklore of Asia and some Native American tribes, they are, as depicted, a fairly basic cross between an octopus and a human. I was intrigued by the concept and so I attempted a digital rendition. I decided to focus mostly on lighting to add shape and definition rather than shadow, it gives an impression to the texture of the octopus skin.
'The Writer's Room':
I will be the first to admit that the focus on the characterisation of my narrator has been minimal, but that is just because he isn't the focus of my project. The one thing I wanted to be clear about him is that his research into the mythological world consumed him. I'm hoping to reflect this in my exhibition piece. As I am basing it around a writer's desk I decided to make some sketches of his room, and ended up using it to reflect his obsession and paranoia. This frame stood out to me so I decided to fine line and ink it. In itself it's quite simple, a door wedged shut with a chair, but is ultimately more complicated for reasons I have already explained. I decided against using colour in this piece as I think the black and white make it quite ominous.
