visual language: evaluation

1.  Which practical skills and methodologies have you developed within this module and how effectively do you think you are employing them within your own practice?

I have really enjoyed experimenting and exploring my skills as a practitioner within this module. I think that before I started this module, I was very restricting of myself and how I did art. So during this module it has really helped me to open up and try new things. It has given me the confidence to test things out and figure out ‘what makes a good drawing’.

2. Which principles/ theories of image making have you found most valuable during this module and how effectively do you think you are employing these within your own practice?

Thinking about composition has really helped in my practice. I think learning about composition and how it can be used has helped me to create new pieces of art with background, focus and different lines of sight. I find it really interesting how you can draw the eye to a certain part of a piece, and I would like to carry on practicing this principle.

3. What strengths can you identify within your Visual Language submission you capitalise on these?

I think I have begun to not be scared of the idea of roughing, and not being too precious with my sketchbooks. To open up more and explore different things without them having to look ‘perfect’ and ‘pristine’ which is how I think I first started to make work in my sketchbook, but by the end I think I am more open with my sketchbook and use it more as a tool rather than a perfect piece of art.

4. What areas for development can you identify within your Visual Language submission and how will you address these in the future?

I think I would still yet to learn to be more open with my sketchbook. Although I think I have come a long way from the beginning of the semester, I want to be able to experiment more and try new things out without being scared of it going wrong or looking ‘ugly’; or more what I define to be ugly. I think I have opened my eyes to a new way of looking at drawing, and how I can use it as an experimental tool, so I would like to try and continue this practice and improve myself as a practitioner.

5. In what way has this module informed how you deconstruct and analyse artwork (whether your own or that of contemporary practitioners)?

I think this module has really helped me in defining what is good drawing. Before I was very critical of even things that just weren’t proportionally sound, but now I catch myself thinking ‘what if this arm was a little bit longer, it would look fun’. I have begun to have more fun making artwork rather than worrying about it having to be perfect. I also think I have got more interested in different practitioners, rather than relying on artists who just work with proportional figures and complex drawings. I have found a new love for the out of the ordinary!

6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance				x
Punctuality					x
Motivation					x
Commitment					x
Quantity of work produced				x
Quality of work produced					x
Contribution to the group					x

visual language: colour palette

here is the pictures and colour palettes for the task this week! i really enjoyed doing this for some reason? it was quite therapeutic and quite interesting to see how many colours are actually in the real world... does that sound stupid? haha probably. but it was really fun, and i think all these colours work really nicely together aesthetically. i thought it was going to be hard because i always wear really dark colours if not black, but then i thought well my hair is one of my most colourful aspects!

visual language: fan art

I was really excited when we got this brief!! I really love a lot of things so it was really hard to pick just one subject to focus on. In the end i decided to go with Kingdom Hearts, which is mine and my big sister's favourite game. I kind of wanted to do the screenprint as a gift to her! 
I started off doing different sketches because i wanted to try out composition, line of sight and depth like we had been learning, but i also needed to make sure that the characters stayed easily recognizable because that's one of the main points of the brief.

In the end i chose the blue and red one in the top right of this post, because i really liked how the composition worked. especially with the fruit because i drew some in the foreground and some in the background.
These are the positives that i'm going to be using for my screenprint. i tried adding negatives into it so that i had some white spaces in my final design, i thought it would look cool!

 These are my final screen prints! I'm quite happy with them. In the end i decided to change the colour scheme and went with red and gold, because i thought this would fit my fan art more as these colours are more associated with the game. however, the gold was a nightmare to work with and just wouldn't do what i wanted it to do! so although i quite enjoyed screenprinting sometimes, it occasionally made me want to rip my hair out! i think if i got more practice at it in the future i would really enjoy it more as i think its a cool way to do things. I also wish that i would've made my design more complicated, as i don't know why but i thought that with screenprinting, the design had to be relatively simple or it wouldnt work, however apparently i was wrong and everyone did beautiful complicated designs and mine was rather simple. however, all in all i enjoyed doing this and think it was a really good eye opener in the practice of screen printing.

visual language: depth

today we were given another presentation where we were asked to sketch out some of the images shown to us on the presentation and talk about the depth. some of the images that we were shown were really interesting. 

i particularly liked this artwork from Moebius. i think it is really beautiful and the curves and perspective really add depth to the image. even though there is not too much shading and fanciness going on, i dont think that it needs it. its powerful by itself.

visual language: elephant, butterfly & i

for this task we were asked to draw ourselves, an elephant and a butterfly but use composition in a clever way. i like how it turned out in the end, whilst i was doing my roughs i felt like the ideas  that i wanted to portray just weren't coming through. if i was to do this again, however i would really like to try working more background and perspective into it as i feel like it looks very flat and doesn't have that much character.

visual language: composition lesson

visual language: composition

 

here are the drawings that i have created in terms of composition. i started not really knowing what i wanted to do. i started to draw a woman and then i went on to try and push myself from just drawing people to draw totoro in some different compositions. however i felt like these drawings weren't really working. so i went back to try drawing people again but i wanted to do someone in a different pose than something basic. i found a picture of a model and tried drawing her in different compositions and places on the frame, i then found the idea of moving her legs around a bit and eventually ended up with my ending composition which i did in ink and pencil crayons.

visual language: 3D lens task

over this week we were asked to create something 3D that represented some sort of super power or superhuman aspect. i decided to go with 'eyes in the back of my head' as it's something my mum says all the time and i got inspired whilst being at home. at first the project felt like it would never be done by me because i was so stuck at what to do and where to go, as i am not normally a 3D artist. however once i got my inspiration it went from there really. i think i need to practice more with 3D and see what else i can do because i need to start pushing myself to do new things. however this task was helpful in opening my eyes to new ways of illustration.

here is a little presentation that i made on issuu as there was so many images i didn't want to frighten you with so many pictures of my hagrid-like hair and grinchy face. it's a little bit of development where me and the photography student were seen playing around with the lighting and the exposure, getting the picture perfect. we also tried close ups and some pictures from the front but they didn't really work i just kind of wanted to see what they would look like!

visual language: collage & posters

the first poster that i did was for a 'club night' i decided this actually after i made the poster as i thought it really looked like something you would see for that kind of event, so i found some 'dates' and a 'name' for the event and boom. it reminded me of when people are drunk and they always want food.

this poster was for an art exhibiton. the reason for this was because of the picture of the regal looking building reminded me of something i'd see from a movie with art inside. i also found the drawing of the little guy sat down and thought it fit perfectly as if he was at the exhibition taking pictures. i used a brush pen to make the title for a more 'handmade' feel. but i think i should have scanned it into photoshop and developed ideas with a more stable looking font. will look into this.

the last poster that i did was for a festival. i thought this afterwards when i had added the words 'stage dive' which i cut from a music magazine. i thought it sounded like a cool name for a festival so there it was. i really like the little wiggly arm i gave this guy for some reason, don't ask. 

i think the handmade font really works for this one as it looks edgy and rough, which a lot of people associate with the festival vibes.

visual language: a portrait of myself using texture

for this task we were asked to make textures and then using those textures we were asked to make a self portrait. at first i was a bit grumpy because this is not normally my forte, but i thought i'd give it a go and i ended up really enjoying it. it was fun to try and make silly portraits of myself instead of something really serious (sometimes it's nice to be a bit silly) so i found this really helpful in making me loosen up a bit and stop being so rigid with my practice. 

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.

visual language: texture, mark making & tone

these are some pictures from my sketchbook of this week's task which was to create 15 drawings that included texture, mark making & tone. i really enjoyed this task because these are some things that i feel like i am quite good at. it was also good to practice a little bit because practice always helps! i think i was quite successful with these drawings and have provided a wide range of stylistic choices and marks. having a theme really helped as well in deciding what i wanted to draw.

photoshop workshop: week three

 the end of the photoshop workshop. i decided to scan one of my other drawings to mix it up a bit. i chose the mermaid drawing because i thought playing with the intricate lifework would be interesting. i really like the outcomes of this photoshop workshop and having the time to experiment and play around with different features has made me more confident than i already was. i enjoyed this session more than the other two as i was allowed to experiment how i wanted and discover the features myself, which is a preferred way of working for me.