Character development - figure in the woods.

(Aloha there, so as i said in the last post, i have a massive backlog of posts i need to upload so theres going to be a hell of alot being post in a short space of time, i apologise if this gunk's up your feed boxes but its my party and i'll spam if i want to.)


So, ive been keeping a few drafts open hoping to keep updating them as i go along the progress, as soon i knew what i wanted to happen in my final outcome, i decided to track how characters  place, colour would change as i had to adapt them to one another.
So lets step in, and go back in time.

This is probably the first point in which i had start to draw this character  It was my "im grumpy about my back and im going to draw whatever i feel like" epiphany day and i just fell in love with it. The strong brow, linking with the arches of the nose, give a really blocky feel to the face that i think breaks it up really well, sometimes with minimal figure drawing your left with a lot white space which is fine but i liked that this effect gave some dimension and gave that strong focus to the centre of the face, its almost like I've given a flat line drawing of a face some contours, which is a bonus!
I chose for this to be green, just because i spent the rest of the day painting in black ink and i didnt want to be that depressing all day so changed it up. I think whenever i draw figures of women theres always an element in them that it could be me. I but most of the characters in this whole project with a bun on the top of their head, as when im at home moping about feeling sorry for myself shaove my hair into a bun and place it right on the top of my head so i feel like i have no hair (glorious feeling not to have a hair scarf constantly) Also its a slight nod to the fact that since ive been dealing with back pains, i have some reverence when it comes to Frida Khalo, i didnt want the project to become "oh i think ive got it as bad as her" so i havnt spoken about it much at-all through the project, just some slight hints here and there. As you'll see in the iconic self portrait ive added in she wear her hair up onto of her head also and surrounded herslef with vines around the neck leading down to her spine, i didn't want to completely rip the poor girls idea off, but i liked the idea of adding in elements of her ideas to get across what i was feeling at the time, and so i added an decorative wreath around my figure.
(Frida Kahlo, Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, Nikolas Muray Collection, )

My project a few weeks on, had moved into knowing i wanted to have a figure in the woods representing the Japanese godess of death "Izanami-no-Mikoto" after finding out all the things about the sea of black tress, it just seemed fitting to have a japanese mythological character in the woods, and when i find out about Izanami, it just clicked. there was  very formatted way to all the depictions of her ad been made, she had on the classical long gown, and a samurai sword and long dark hair with a bun placed on the top. I mean, i could really make this stuff it, it was sheer coincidence that it just work perfectly with the drawings i had been previously making. So when the workshop came where we were asked to make 4 double page spreads i decided to give a go at just drawing the top half, focusing more on her face.I was really happy how my earlier drawings were developing and working for me now,i think even if i hadn't of made the earlier drawings, she would of still ended up being drawn like this by my hand. I knew i had the composition of the face right i just now needed focus on colour.

There were a fair few colour studies done of the face, i looked at more what i would call normal colours, giving her blush in her cheeks and some colour in her face and i liked the actually look of this piece but it just didn't tie in enough with my other paintings. So i then reverted into making her more creature like and giving her dark mossy green skin and brown hair, this tied in more with the paintings but i thought started to make her look to over the top. I wanted her to look like she had just been wandering round the woods aimlessly for centuries, so still in some way human.

In the end i went for a happy balance of the two, and i think this worked out the best. i kept the hair fairly dark as in depictions i'd previously seen she had jet black hair but this just wouldn't of looked right in the painting, so i came as close as i could, and i think it actually framed the face well in the end. I kept the blush in the cheeks to give a semi-human feel still but toned down a lot of the shading on the face so you get the ghostly effect.
I think also the sizing of the piece in the final was key. Ive spoken previously about wanting the two figures to be larger then the scenes as i want them to pop ouf more to the viewer and the overly large face compared to the tiny figures seen in the scenes around really give that effect.

Gosh that was a bit text meaty want it! hopefully not to boring!
Update soon!

03.05.13 - final outcome placement planning.

Have done a few sketches today of what I think I'm going to end up having as the placements of the watercolour scenes.
It actually took more thought then I had originally expected (as usual peel!) Since my scenes take place in a forest, I do just naturally have a repeating pattern of lots of trees, when I was coming up with the idea of having them in a sequence of different shapes and sizes, I didn't take into account the weight of some of the paintings compared to others.
Some of them are heavy in details and colour and then others are a lot of clean and simple so when placing the, onto the page, I want the right balance that's still pleasing to look at.
Taking this in mind, I've added/edited some scenes and I actually think its made the whole thing look a lot more like a flowing story.
I'm hoping you can see this through the quick sketches.
Now is just to paint the mocks and finals all in 5 days :|
Update soon..... if I haven't run away.

02.05.13 - Review day.

30.04.13 - Painting development

So ive noticed that its taking me longer then I expected to paint some of my practice scenes, with this in mind I thought I would take photos of the development of the painting every 30 minutes or so.
It feels like with the effect I desire, I end up painting about 5 layers on the one sheet, so I kindly end 5 times longer then I should. This is a thing I'm relying really hard to work on ANSI thought I would lift you guys up to the fact that just cause you pick a media that feels natural to you, doesn't mean you're not spending to much time on it.
I'll keep you guys updated on if I've learnt any new tricks.

29.04.13 - Guest lecture with Andrew Foster.

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On Monday afternoon we had a guest lecture with Andrew Foster.
Andrew Foster is a well known British illustrator. Working mainly now in a authorial style, with a mix media capsule of stunning work.
Here are my notes:
Graduated in 1994
Avoids illustration events
Aged 13 - drew record covers
Went to st. Martins to do a MA
Gary Powell
Greyson perry - lack of fashionability
Scale impacts the viewer and informs you
Work is about his life
Draw stories, doesn't matter what it looks like


I found it really hard to process this lecture.
Andrew was a big personality, with a lot of strong ideas and concepts.
As you can see from the notes, it was hard to really get anything down on paper. I was definitely more into just listening to what he had to say.
I had a very long chat with my roommate (who is also on the course) about the whole experience afterwards. It defiantly resonated with me long afterwards.
It had confirmed a lot of things that were bubbling around in my head for a very long time.
I knew that after my last project, I needed to stop focusing all my work around what grade I get. There is absolutely no way you can ever make everyone happy when you are dealing with your artwork and trying to, to get the grades you think you deserve will make you unfulfilled at the end of it all.
At the end of the last two terms I received the exact same mark, even though I had known I worked on one considerably harder then the other. When recovering my first term marked it spurred me on to want to do better and work harder to achieve higher grades, then at the end of it all, I got the exact same.
I now know my place, and have found this pattern all the way through my life. I am a middle achiever (not failing and not flying) I had to work SO hard to get even my merit to get into university, while others sailed through, and at the time I found it so hard to deal with, I felt short changed, and misunderstood. And these past few months and put into perspective that I jut do t want that hassle in my life anymore.
I only have a handful of months left in school, a place in my life where I can spend all my time focusing on making art, and I just don't want the stress of grades running my last years of that.
Getting a high grade is pleasing one person, the dude who's marking it, and i'd much rather enjoy making my work myself.
Andrew, made it quite clearly that whatever path you choose, whatever grade you get is all relative.


FINISH

29.04.13 - Morning Workshop.

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So things were little different this Monday in particular. We had a bit of a shakeup and had our lecture in the afternoon for a change.
We started the day with our workshops, this weeks task was to draw 10 different heads all showing something in particular in the piece.
Now, I can understand these workshops, there put in our schedules to help us come up its different ideas and make us maybe look at different styles, subjects, medias that could broaden our working practice. But since there for everyone some of them are relevant and helpful and then some mot so much.
I work a lot with character so this one wasn't as helpful as some in the past. I did use of the the emotions from the list (loneliness) to develop some colours and techniques with the character designs I've been using for this project, but didn't find the, helping me develop anything in particular. Shame, I do usually love a chance to draw faces all day long

26.04.13 - collaborative project workshop and final outcome.

Okay so I'm now actually writing this prior to when this day happens (have a little bit of lea-wave for me guys, it's long days for us students, a 10 hour day is tiring! I can't write up in the same day everyday even if I wanted to)
So quite a big chunk of the next few entries are going to be catchups on what's been going on in the last week or so.
ANYWAY...
So yes the collaborative project, as I had been working on a few minor ideas before we fully started on the Friday workshop, we both got off to a pretty good start, with a plan of what we needed to have by the end of the day, we quickly worked out a schedule and gave ourself almost a real half of the work going. I aimed most of my time developing character and composition on just over four of the finals and Jess focused on background, well this was the plan at least.
I definitely noticed that even though we both got on fantastically, and our ideas were in sync, Jess had a much faster pace then me when working.
It might be down to what we were actually drawing at the time, or the fact that I'm just quite a slow drawer, who knows, but I found myself taking a lot more time on things that maybe didn't matter as much.
When I look back at the photos now I genuinely can't tell there done by two different people, which I really love about our outcome. I think my favourite final out of them all in the orange dessert scene.
We wanted it to look like our character was traveling through different scenes, almost like he was seeing the wonders of the world, or fulfilling a bucket list.
One way of really clearly setting that out in a short space of time was to use colour to our advantage. We made a theme for each destination and with that came a colour palette.
I had been previously working with outlines and block ink to make pattern around the the figures. But we adapted this into shapes that are known with desserts. We used both my drawings of cacti and jesses and combined them together to make a abstract landscape. I just think the whole thing came out great in that piece and it was exactly what I had imagined our outcome to look like.
I would definitely do more collaboration with other people, I find the part of sharing ideas and visions really exciting, it's the part of teaching I'm most looking forward to and probably why I try not to work alone and come into the studios on mot days.
Good project guys.
Update soon.