visual language: shape

this week we were given a task to do some portraits using shape. i found this task quite difficult being primarily a line driven person, it was an interesting task. i think in the future i will try to incorporate some of these ideas into my work but i still love linework too much to give it up too easily. overall i think the task was helpful to me but i need to get more creative and possibly try more complicated drawings using shape.

untold story: initial thoughts

The Visual Journalist

• Research driven project.
• independent research & field trip
• Untold story - make into a picture book

What is a picture book?

• don't be an author
• not graphic novels or comics or children's book

Choose 1 location from the list:

ANIMAL SHELTERS

4 Research Branches to consider when on location:

• Observation
• Fact
• People
• You (me lol)

I have decided to choose animal shelters as my location for my untold story, you know me, any excuse to do a project with anything to do with animals and i'm totally on board.

I have decided for my independent field trip to go to the Dog's Trust in Leeds, to play with the dogs and learn about their life there.
Are they happy?

About the dogs

About 1 dog in particular?

How the shelter runs

How the trust was established

The first rescued dog?

Do you pay for the dogs when you adopt them?

About the volunteers

Other stories and places to consider

Dog Home fire in Manchester

• How is the rebuilding going?
• Where are the dogs now?
• How did it happen?

Breeding vs Adoption

Dog farms

I LOVE DOGS.

one week book brief: the finished thing

I really enjoyed the process of making the final books, however i do feel like the colours are a bit wishy-washy. I wished we had made them more brighter so that our book stood out a bit more, after looking at classmate's books who's colours were so vibrant. 

I think that we worked really well as a team and from hearing other classmate's struggles it seems quite strange as we had such a good time. I think working in a group has greatly improved my ability to listen to other's and their ideas and to collaborate with other people and make something that we all like rather than just one person dictating how it went.  

one week book brief: the screen printing

 here is the process of the screenprinting and the special paper where we drew our book ready to be exposed.

it was a really fun experience because i had never really screen printed before so it was fun to use the equipment and learn how it worked.
it was a long process as we had to do the green first and then do the purple but it was fun!

i think that the colours we chose were really complimentary but i still kinda wish that we had made them a little bit darker because they were quite light and i was scared that they looked 'wishy washy' compared to other people's with bold colours.

however i still was really pleased with the outcome and my group, and how well we worked together and the outcome that we made together!
group projects are fun!!

one week book brief: the drawings

when we decided that our book was going to show the story of the pigeon man, we all dedicated pages of the book to eachother. i was given page 5&6 to do a double spread of the man holding the pigeon by it's wings like in the video that i took. 

at first we decided on a colour scheme of gray and yellow, but i was thinking about it and asked the group if we should change colours. as yellow and gray are so different, what was happening was we were using the gray to outline a drawing and then embellishing it with the yellow rather than using them to work with eachother.

after all agreeing we chose to go with green and purple as we think those colours compliment eachother and also still relate because of pigeon's shimmer sometimes shows purple and green!

one week book brief: PIGEON MAN

the reason i didn't put this on the other post was because i feel like it needed its own one!!! this was the CRAZIEST thing that i have seen for a while and i'm not quite sure what the heck happened hahaha!!

so the story goes, Marnie was just playing around in the pigeons for a bit and we were hoping that something exciting would happen and boy were we in for a treat. i was videoing Marnie and she did this immensely shocked face and when i turned the camera around to see what she was shocked at i was greeted with a strange man shoving a pigeon in his daughters face. 

now, i'm not sure if this man actually knew that pigeons are basically diseases with wings and that shoving it in his daughters face was... kinda really gross. but she seemed to love it and was laughing her head off, as we were. i still can't quite believe that it happened, but it did... and here's the proof for it. 

it's safe to say i think we've got the inspiration for our book that we were hoping for!

one week book brief: monday madness

so today we got given a new brief, we were put into groups and given a list of "funny and quirky" things to do around Leeds and then sent off on our merry way.
we did quite a few things and had a crazy time, here's just a few of the pictures that we took for inspiration for our book!!

OUIL403 Visual Skills: module evaluation

do judge a book by it's cover: evaluation

i feel like this brief went really well for me in that i found different ways to work and i looked at illustration in a different light and stepped away from my comfort zone of figurative work. 

looking at the final piece that i did, there are some things that i wish i would've had more time to develop or took more time in developing. that is the inside sleeves i love a lot, and i wish i had time to redo the whole book with this style of a border and pattern. however i do like the front cover that i did, but there is quite a lot of white space and if i were to do it again i think that i would make the title and pattern bigger so it filled more of the space. i do like the simplicity of the design that i did, so i don't think i would've added more to what i did, just change the size. this would've been easy if i'd have done it digitally, however i liked the handmade feel of it and i think if i would've done it digital i wouldn't have got the same effects that i wanted.

i think stepping away from figurative work has been beneficial to me in that i'm growing as an illustrator and not just a doodler. i have also found that i really like to play around with fonts as well as pattern, and in the future projects i would hope to be able to play with fonts a bit more. 

so to reiterate, if i were to do this brief again, i would be more conscious of the space on the front cover and to make sure to fill the space i'm given, and i would've liked to have played around with more designs that are similar to the ones on the inside sleeve on my final piece. 

do judge a book by it's cover: further development & transformative moment

here are some further pages of development that i've done. i found that once i started getting into colour and doodling and painting the patterns i found that these patterns were so vibrant and lovely that I DIDNT NEED TO DO FIGURATIVE STUFF. deep breath. this is a big thing for me as you know how i like to draw my bloody people. 
i think it's good for me to branch out and try different things and these patterns i am in LOVE WITH.