Exercise 3.3: Illustrative Drawings

For this exercise I re-visited my journey sketches from exercise 3.0 and decided to focus on the War Memorial because it is a big landmark in our town and I am interested in doing further drawings of it.

I started collecting my visual research by printing off my original photos and then went back again and took some new ones at different angles. I wanted to see what different it made to the feel of the place by how close up or far away I took the photographs.

I decided on the word 'Secluded' for my illustration and this bottom photo seemed to capture that the best. I then went on to do some sketches from these photos.

I started with my Blackwing pencil and did several sketches initially and then I went in with watercolours to see how that would change the feel of the sketch. I also sketched in Micron pen and then added watercolour, inspired by Lucinder Rogers technique of using minimal colour, I thought this could work well for this illustration.

These first sketches didn't really seem to capture my word very well but they did give me practice drawing the monument which was helpful.

These mediums went so well together and gave a somber feel with the contrasting grey and red together. I used Micron and Watercolours to achieve this.

This sketch seemed to get closer to what I wanted to convey and so I'm using this one as a starting point for my final sketch.

Final Illustration

Micron Sketch

Final Illustration 'Secluded'.

Final thoughts.

I think the final illustration is quite successful in communicating 'Secluded'. I like the balance of using only two colours and I really enjoyed using the Micron to sketch and the watercolours to finish.

Overall I really enjoyed this exercise and look forward to seeing how this style develops for me.

Additions:

Since completing this exercise I had gone back and looked at my composition and viewpoints. I realised after my tutor feedback that I was using the same viewpoint quite a lot in my work so I decided to learn more about composition by watching some YouTube videos and then try to implement what I learnt into some thumbnail sketches to see the difference.

So I photographed my original sketch and put it into Procreate on my iPad and drew several boxes of different shapes. I added the grid and shell lines as separate layers and in a bright pink colour to make them stand out and then I drew over my original sketch to create a simple line drawing, which I could then resize and move around to try the different compositions.

Using the shell composition in particular added a lot more interest, it really draws the eye in and leads it around the picture. I'd never really picked up on this before but it really does change the sketch quite a lot.

My original theme for my sketch was 'Secluded', so I tried to arrange my composition to suggest that and picked a couple that I thought translated the theme well.

Then I started using colour to see how that affected the theme and feel of the sketch. I soon realised how much of a difference that makes too and would need to play around with it more to get the look I wanted.

The original sketch with the grey and pop of red seemed to work the best. Going back to my digital thumbnails I noticed adding a blue sky  and bright green foliage really changed the feel and wasn't the look I was going for.

These thumbnails and colour tests, really have added to my knowledge of composition. It was good to re-visit this exercise and try this different compositions to help me put into practice what I have recently learnt. I have more to learn to improve in this area and look forward to seeing how this changes my sketches in the future.

2020. Composition For Noobs | Beginner Guide. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VVzCr3c9Jk&list=WL&index=28> [Accessed 28 September 2020].

2020. BEGINNER's GUIDE TO COMPOSITION!. [online] Available at: <https://youtu.be/num4qcqTqGU> [Accessed 28 September 2020].