P5 : Exercise 5.0 - Taking Stock

For this exercise we were to consider all the work we have already done and reflect on what we did and didn't enjoy and what we may want to continue with.

Materials:

The materials I most enjoyed working with are graphite pencil, digital painting, acrylic paints, micron pen and watercolours.

Processes:

There were a few processes I enjoyed including;

• Adding stories to characters
• Drawing scenes from film/tv (Brandon J Wallace inspired)
• Drawing plants at Henstead Exotic Gardens
• 'Sketchbook artist'
• Single line sketches
• Scenes of places with descriptive words

Words I most empathise with:

• Narrative
• Slow
• Abstract
• Expressive
• Inside
• Imaginative
• Meaning
• Place
• Ideas

Exercises I didn't enjoy:

Sketchbook Flip Through and Commentary:

https://youtu.be/umNJBCKXWE4

Amendments:

On advice of my tutor I have removed the commentary from the video above and shortened it for faster viewing.

https://youtu.be/h2DhqyAqYp8

Notes:

Summary of the video - There were a few areas I didn't like during the course but equally see their value to help me grow as an illustrator and take me outside my comfort zone. These were drawing in public, observational drawing and drawing with unconventional materials.

There were several art supplies I enjoyed working with and want to continue to use going forward, these were acrylic paints, Micron pen, watercolours, graphite pencil and coloured pencils.

Adding stories, drawing scenes from film and tv, drawing flowers and plants, becoming a sketchbook artist, single line sketches, timed, blind and semi blind contour drawing and scenery such as cafes or landscapes all inspire me.

I narrowed down the ways I enjoyed working and where such as outside in a secluded spot, inside in the comfort of my studio, taking my time, using my imagination, using story, abstract and expressive marks.

Taking on board my tutors comments about areas to improve; being more experimental, adding notes to my sketches, capturing essence, composition, viewpoints and perspective. I also want to relax more into my sketches and have fun with them more.

Thinking back to the beginning of the course, I started with a fairly negative view of sketchbooks in that I didn't really use mine but wanted to get into a good habit and have a good relationship with my sketchbooks. Over the course this has definitely improved and whilst I'm not quite at the stage of carrying it with me everywhere I am actually well on my way to that now.

The last part I talked about the areas I enjoyed in the course which I have covered here already and ideas for moving forward with the assignment.

P5: Research Task - 5.0 - Visual Language

For this exercise we were to explore an illustrator from the list given and discover more about their visual language style. I chose Holly Wales and have written my statement below from the research I discovered and have included my references sources below.

Jealousgallery.com. (2020). Holly Wales Prints | JEALOUS Gallery. [online] Available at: https://www.jealousgallery.com/artists/holly-wales [Accessed 18 Feb. 2020].

Holly Wales. (2020). Holly Wales. [online] Available at: https://www.hollywales.com/ [Accessed 18 Feb. 2020].

Instagram.com. (2020). Holly Wales (@hollibobs) • Instagram photos and videos. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/hollibobs/?hl=en [Accessed 18 Feb. 2020].

Communication Arts. 2020. Holly Wales | Communication Arts. [online] Available at: <https://www.commarts.com/fresh/holly-wales> [Accessed 12 May 2020].

Holly Wales. 2020. Holly Wales. [online] Available at: <https://www.hollywales.com/#/southwest-magazine-1/> [Accessed 12 May 2020].



Holly Wales has a really vibrant, interesting style and has worked with many companies and individuals across her career, below are the words I feel communicate the main points about her work.

Keywords:

Place/Travel, Shapes, Story, Experiments, Bright Colour, Lettering, Objects, Fashion.

Statment:

Holly Wales is an Illustrator from the UK. Her work is heavily focused on bold, bright marker pen colours and her style depicts shapes, forms, food and drink, places, 2D work for books and magazines and map illustrations.

Wales, uses typography in some of her work, experimenting with different styles dependant on the brief. Her words are a mixture of descriptive, informative and practical. With an education in Graphic Design her experience in this area shines through in her illustrations of objects, such as labels on bottles, glasses and other products.

It is clear that Wales has perfected her use of marker pens to present a variety of subject matter and in a style that is very bold and bright. Wales also has creative skills in sharing emotional narratives through street scenes and portraits by using limited colour palettes with black and white characters, such as in her work for Southwest magazine.

Wales loves to travel and this is evident in her work both professionally and in her personal sketchbooks of places, maps and exotic drinks. Wales’ drawings communicate a passion for exotic places, seeing the world and expressing it through her vibrant creative lens in her own unique style.

Reflection:

Researching Holly Wales work was really interesting for me. I enjoy marker pens also but am still exploring how to use them well, so it was really educational for me to see all the vast themes Wales has managed to cover with one essential medium. I also find Wales vibrant colours very inspiring as I am very particular on the colours I use in my own work and so this has given me a bit more confidence in that.

Wales' book looks like something that would really benefit me and so I am looking to obtain that in the near future to help me in my own work.

P5: Exercise 5.1 - Making an Action plan - visually

For this exercise we were to work in our sketchbooks summarising what we have done so far and making an action plan to help us with the assignment. I have recorded a flip through video of my sketchbook for this exercise including my thoughts and writings, which you can view below.

Sketchbook Flip Through with Commentary:

https://youtu.be/J6YhM0lVENU

References:
You Tube. 2020. How To Draw Perfect Squares & Cubes In Perspective. [online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BTPCf0BEJo> [Accessed 12 May 2020].

Bang, M. and Bang, M., n.d. Picture This. New York: Chronicle Books LLC.

Amendments:

Here is a shorter version of the above video for faster viewing.

Notes:

• Summary - Things I wanted to cover in the assignment; perspective and  viewpoints.
• Mediums I want to choose from; digital, acrylic paint, watercolours, ink pen, coloured pencils.
• Pastel colours, techniques I want to use such as taking my time and adding detail using coloured pencils. I reference my 'Paper rose' sketch.
• I then talked about loosening up my approach and being more experimental.
• The last page was a summary of areas I felt my work was more playful from previous exercises and I included photos of the sketchbooks I made because I was thinking of including that in my assignment.

P5: Exercise 5.2 - Making Connections

This exercise was about going through all the work we have done so far and making connections and collections by printing off our favourite images and putting them together with other images in different sizes to make new images.

At first I struggled to get my head around this exercise but after going through all my sketchbooks and laying them out I was able to come up with some really interesting connections.

Final Collections:

Sketchbook Flip Through with Commentary:

https://youtu.be/v_3I_s-uGEc

Amendments:

I have shortened the above video for faster viewing.

https://youtu.be/D03vp5g1TNU

Summary:

I initially struggled to get started with this exercise so I went back to SCAMPER to help me move forward. Looking back through all my work from the course on my computer and my sketchbooks helped me to choose which pieces to print off to make into new sketches.

Reviewing all my work I soon realised there were connections already there, things I wanted to work on further like perspective, composition and viewpoints, soft and bold marks, line work, pastel colours, ambience and my interest in landscapes, environments flowers and objects.

Putting these connections together really helped me to prepare to move onto to the next exercise constructing a visual journal and have an idea of where my work is heading overall.

Onto the collections themselves, I mainly used my travel watercolour sketches as a base to create landscapes from, adding in my favourite elements which contained either flowers, people, trees and statues to give depth and interest. I enjoyed playing around with the size of the elements to change the overall look and to try to suggest height, depth and distance.

The last few collections combined mark making and ambience to show my interest in those areas and how I could combine them in new ways.

P5: Exercise 5.3 - Constructing a Visual Journal

This exercise was my favourite, bringing everything together to form an action plan for the assignment. I really enjoyed making my sketchbook for this exercise and took a long time planning out the sections and how I would lay the visual journal out so that it covered everything I wanted it to and helped me to move forward with the assignment.

Sketchbook Flip Through with Commentary:

https://youtu.be/m3LACOrLpM4

No Commentary:

https://youtu.be/EiQaqMXiO9A

Addition:

Summary - I really enjoyed putting this visual journal together and spent a lot of time on it, thinking about the areas I wanted to cover and my goals for the future.

I chose to order my journal in sections which I added into the inside cover;

1. Humor/Enjoy the Process
2. Slow/Details
3. Colour
4. Technical - Composition/Perspective/Viewpoints
5. Narrative
6. Play and Process
7. Essence and Ambience
8. Form
9. Playful & Pretty
10. My Collections
11. Mediums
12. Recurring Themes

I then presented the work I had done throughout the unit that represented this areas and added headlines, text and borders to give a visual appeal. These sections all touch on the points I've spoken about previously and cover not only what I would like to achieve but also areas my tutor has pointed out and things I've discovered in my work during the course such as humor and narrative which I'd like to explore further.