26.11.2010

This week I have been working on a 'mood board' on the subject of 'childhood'.  I was not sure of the size the 'board' should be and asked my tutor by e-mail. Unfortunately I received her reply after I did it. I  reflect on the fact that I have paid for a distance learning course. It was very expensive for me, and I tried my best to make an informed choice before deciding. Someone I trust also told me they had a positive experience with the OCA.  Nevertheless, it is distance learning - relying on the internet at the moment - and when my tutor is sick, as she has been for the past two weeks or so, I am left to my own device.  Worse than that, this is my first course with this organisation.  

Their website is not  good for illustration students - in my opinion - it has 'doors' for many other courses, but not for us.  As a result, every time I tried to communicate through there, the answers were from other students, not very quick to reply either. It probably does not attract many students, some of them told me that they had formed another forum which they found easier to use.  I am not surprised.  Either dieting websites have better chatrooms!

So at the moment I feel very much like I am left on my own with my folder with the course work (a very expensive folder). I am a person who needs lots of encouragement, and could get really disappointed.   Luckily I still attend a weekly painting class, and my teacher there is a commercial artist. He is interested in what I am doing and is always full of advice and suggestions.  On the positive side,  I am learning some new things and I do appreciate the contents of my folder. It pushes me in new directions, and since I have paid, I make sure that I do do it!  I didn't particularly enjoy this week's exercise but I gave it my best shot.

I started by following the instructions (although I thought A3 was a large size of paper to work on and later my tutor told me it may be too small), collected images which related to my childhood, all of them symbolic.  But I did not like the visual aspect of the finished product, and so I worked on it with pastels - and went a bit too far, but there is no way I'm going to do this again!

I also made random sketches, not as many as I would have liked but it's important that I've kept sketching.  Some are for a thank you/xmas card for a friend who works at the Tate gallery.  She has given me 2 free tickets for the Gauguin exhibition! Plan to go with my daughter.  It's particularly welcome as I have only seen one local exhibition lately, about african textiles. I was looking forward to it and it really did not live up to my expectations.  There are certainly  more colours and different examples in the shop windows around here!Let's hope next week is going to be happier!

Developing a visual memory

I was keen to practise 'cataloguing the contents of (...) through drawings'. So after going for a haircut, I drew what I could see on the hairdresser shelf in front of the mirror, on the way home, on the bus in a tiny sketchbook. 
     It was very informative (tiny drawing that I can't find now). I remembered a brush, the top of which I could describe in details, a small spray bottle, after quite a while I remembered a comb that was put down and picked up by the hairdresser, and the rest was a big question mark.  

I think I had been sitting there for about 20mn, looking at the hairbrush and day dreaming. Not taking any notice of anything else. Since then, I have started looking around me more accurately, as if I was opening my eyes. Perhaps I should update my eye test too?

This week I haven't sketched as much as I should, I finished the 'childhood' small painting in oils that I mentioned earlier:

It was a pleasure to paint, and mess around with the paint texture. I thought that the bike looked fine to me, but I had struggled with our position, proportions, faces - still difficult to paint a child and not ending with her looking old!
 

Also, there was a discussion on the OCA website about art where I said that I had to come to the conclusion that at least part of it is genetic. Two generations ago my family was working class, doing their best to elevate themselves above poverty. In this situation, art was allowed as a hobby (music, crafts) if accepted at all, despite the fact that many had displayed artistic abilities.  I am very lucky to be able to feel that I can be an artist. I have been a musician, a potter, and now an illustration student. Still, it is not comfortable, the guilt is about not having 'a real job' and not bringing in money for the family. 

Turning words into pictures:

I have started this exercise, but despite having a range of materials at hand, my ideas seemed to come too quickly and I captured them in pencil, then I checked with Google images to find some more.  I have chosen the word  Exotic.  Google reminded me of 'exotic cars', that I am not interested in at all, and 'exotic dancing'. That one seems to be about strippers,  belly dancers, burlesque.  I decided to pick Josephine baker to symbolise exotic dancing. Somehow this has led me to start a portrait of her in the style of a 'Fayum mummy portrait' (more about this later), in oils.   Here are the images I was talking about:

 

  

Also remembered one of my favourite painters: Le Douanier Rousseau

Henri Rousseau (dit le Douanier Rousseau), Le Rêve, 1910
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

 

12/11/2010

Generating Ideas:

Exploring Lateral thinking, Brainstorming and 
 
Spider Diagrams

A Google picture search of  'seaside' gave mostly pictures of 'beach', 'sunsets', 'shells', 'weddings on the beach'- which I forgot - all of them,  and some illustrations. For instance prints by Natalie Pascoe, and saucy postcards (I love these!).  OK, so this search has shown me that it may help not to forget a major concept.

Natalie Pascoe (Print)

 

I repeated the process with other words, and checking my diagrams against what came up when my daughter tried to do the same thing, I realised that this way is another one to bring up new ideas.

 

In my case, the word that was more difficult to work with was 'Festival', and my diagram reflects it. It is much smaller than the others.  This is simply because my experience of festivals is limited.Or so I thought until I used the Google picture search. Again, it reminded me that I forgot street festivals, such as carnivals, and I've been involved with Mahogany, a big local award winning carnival company (I didn't realise this could fall under the 'festival banner'). 

My favourite strategy to generate ideas was to think about the subject myself first. I like it because it is more personal, and rooted in my experience.  The use of a search engine is easy and quick, (as long as a connected computer is available), and reminded me of  important things that I forgot, so I should use it too.  Asking someone else is also useful, but it depends on the availability of another person, and who the other person is, while my computer is usually available on demand . On the other hand, the computer comes up with ideas that are less personal and I'd have to be careful not to forget that they can be too commonplace.

Exercise: writing a brief

 After reading the course information,  I have found an illustration in a newspaper, but I was still curious and looked at examples of briefs on the internet. 

Illustration Brief:

Clients: npower

Overview: npower is a gas and electriciy supplier. 

They now want to increase their own brand profile and supply of green energy with a seasonal promotion in newspaper.

Usage: The illustration would be used and incorporated in an advert with the company name and required information,  placed in The Guardian on Monday, 8th November, 2010.

The illustration needs to appear below an area for a banner with text and a Christmas style border, and above promotion and company's details and information.  

The ad size is 22 x 14 cm(portrait format).    Illustration: 15x14cm.

The look that they want to achieve is one similar to a  children book illustration/cartoon.    The Illustration will extend the meaning of the text (key words: get smart, winter, green energy). The client would like something more than a static illustration, so some quirkiness, movement or witty element may be preferebable to make the illustration more striking and memorable.

 

The finished advert will be in printed in black and white.

'greetings'

School holidays (including Haloween) means that I have taken a break for a week.

This week I came back to my 'greetings' postcard project, with no ideas at all. At first I was so frustrated that I started feeling like a clown. Hence my first sketch:

This gave me a starting point for another sketch, describing my working conditions on the kitchen table etc:

I was supposed to be 'in the style of' Quentin Blake.  I liked it as a starting point and moved on to more ideas:

To get to this point, I had cut and pasted the paper (didn't know how to do this on the computer), and realised that the image of my son (with the axe) in his halloween costume reminded me of the boy in 'Where the wild things are'

I tried to 'adopt and adapt' some elements
like the trees, so they would be obvious
clues for people who know these books.
I tried to add shading with pencil marks
that would emulate his pen style, not sure
this was entirely successful.

Maurice Sendak

So here is my finished picture. It was made by printing the previous image in progress on art paper, then using gouache, pencils, and a pen (felt tip kind made for pen and ink).I made my image bigger than a postcard for putting in details more easily (25 x 17cm).

I'm having so many problems with this technology, I am wasting so much time with my beginner's mistakes! Here I was trying to show my finished image, plus the fact that although I can now control the size of the image in print, on paper - when it comes to what goes on the screen, how to place it, and make it in the same proportions as the original, it's the system controlling me rather than the other way at the moment. So this image should be 16.5 x 11.5 cm. I have show two here. The first one is scanned and added here. The second has been resized with photoshop elements first, and I have asked the computer to show it at that size, but look what I get (added as 'original size'). I have left it as an example of my continuing learning and battling.

A last image I want to put here this week, is an image in progress. Painted in acrylics, but I will continue in oils. It represents practice and more. I was working on  resemblance. I am painting from a family picture. The one in the back is me, and this picture captures a long, long story which means a lot to me. I didn't realise how much until I started. I think I ought to dig deep and see if I can use whatever lurks in there for my own development. Here it is: