P4: Exercise 4.3 Conversations with pictures - interpretation

For this exercise we were to add narrative to previous sketches and think about Quentin Blake's 'suppose we make it different' principle. I started by purchasing the book;

Blake, Q. and Blake, Q. (1996). The Puffin book of nonsense verse. London: Puffin.

I found the illustrations amusing and silly but the principle helped get me thinking how I could create the narratives for my own sketches. Going through the sketches I had drawn in part 3, I used sticky note tabs to write little narratives on my favourites. It was a lot of fun coming up with ideas to go with the scenes and characters and really brought my sketches to life.

Here are the ones I created the narratives for:

The next part of the exercise asks us to re-draw some of our sketches to include the narrative. I picked my favourite two.

This first attempt I took from my original sketch of 'Michelle making coffee' and wanted to use the same style with the brown paper bag and fine liner but try to make it more cartoon like and change the colours. I added her narrative as a thought bubble.

This first attempt didn't exactly go to plan. I used the wrong side of the paper bag so it was too shiny to hold the pen and pencils well. The colours didn't seem to work that well either, I didn't think it was as strong as my original sketch.

So I decided to attempt it again this time remembering to use the right side of the paper bag, scrunching it up so it looked more like my original and using the same colours and supplies as the original. I think this worked better in some ways, but I'm still not convinced that the thought bubble works very well.

The next character sketch I chose was my miserable 'Erynn'. For some reason I just loved how her expression came out in the original sketch and so I wanted to develop that further. I found it was quite difficult to replicate her expression but did my best and tried three different ways to include her narrative and used watercolour in limited colours to add to the scene.

It's interesting that depending on where the text is placed, it really changes the overall feel. I think I like the top one best as the text is under the illustration and it emphasises her mood while her face looks downward.

I enjoyed doing these illustrations and look forward to taking them further in future exercises.

The next part of this exercise was to write a letter which included illustrations to either a character or place that I had sketched before. I chose 'Sally' who I created in exercise 4.1 and used the scene to form the basis of my illustrations.

Since the scene was primarily about getting out of the cold and into the warm, cosy cafe, I decided to use that as a theme for my letter. This time I wanted to use digital drawing so that I could use features such as the luminance brush, the grunge brush and the glimmer brush to create the effect I wanted.

Originally I planned to create the background and illustrations digitally and then print that off and hand-write the letter in pen.

However, when I started to play around in Procreate the letter evolved itself. I started with light sketches of the illustrations I wanted to include and then copied those onto a textured background. I started off with the intention of doing a light coffee coloured textured background, influenced by my 'paper bag' sketch earlier but when it came to start thinking about the text things changed.

Letter.

After I had completed this stage, I went into Procreate's text options and saw the 'Chalkduster' font. I tried it out on the coffee coloured background and it didn't really go that well. The reason I was attracted to that particular font was because the cafe has blackboard table surfaces and offers children coloured chalks to draw with on the tables.

Of course I then thought, what would the letter look like with a chalkboard style background, so I changed it and loved the effect. That then influenced my decision to stick with that and use the 'Chalkduster' font.

The illustrations themselves I tried to keep fairly simple and stick to my influence from my 'paper bag sketch' of black and white. The only other colour I wanted to add was the glow of the lights to express the cosy feel of the cafe inside.

For the letter itself I based it on the original postcard content from exercise 4.1 and the general feel I was aiming to get across. I did want to include some Christmas illustrations but found it made the whole letter too cluttered and didn't leave enough room for the text so I chose to leave that out.

Final Letter Design:

Letter Time-Lapse:

Reflections.

Overall this exercise was a lot of fun and really interesting to me. I found myself very involved with the narratives and enjoying using my creativity to make up stories for my characters. Its been great to see how the previous work in part 3 of this course has been built on in part 4. Its very rewarding to see that progression and to develop ideas more fully. I look forward to building on this for assignment 4.