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Saturday 25 February 2012

Exercise: Identifying tools and materials

Since I've found using acrylics rather fun and practical in the previous task, I decided to find illustrators using this medium. 
  Here are the ones I have selected at the moment (maybe others will be added later):


The Brothers Hildebrandt painted large Lord of the rings illustrations in acrylics on masonite

Will Terry: uses acrylics on arches paper, and also digital art.




Zachariah Ohora works with acrylics on stonehenge paper


Jun Hua 'bugs' life' is also colorful but different in style

Looking at the work of the Brothers Hildebrandt, I have found that to illustrate a calendar of 'Lord of the rings', they created very elaborate initial drawings on tracing paper before these were transferred onto large pieces of masonite, then painted in acrylics. Apart from that, I haven't found more details about the tools and materials they used. 

Will Terry has his own website where I purchased his short course on painting with acrylics (dry brushing).  For his acrylic paintings, he gives detailed information on the brushes he uses (mostly flats) painting medium, paper and technique. He also uses detailed drawing before putting brush to paper following a whole process that is followed every time. The initial drawings and some decisions about the composition (eg where the lighting will come from) are part of this process. Interestingly he talks about changing the process to digital and the advantage of being faster.  

Zachariah Ohora produces images including the lettering. On his website, I have seen that he has been working with silk printing for a bus illustration. I can see that his work with expenses of a limited colour palette could be made with painting or printing or digitally. Unfortunately, as I have often found, illustrators work is often shown as images, the artist can be in the spotlight too but - unlike when I researched pen and ink illustrators - there is virtually no information available on tools and materials. 



Monday 6 February 2012

Assignment three: A poster

The Brief: to design an illustration for a poster for a music event - I picked "a Jazz evening".

1. The moodboard: as usual, I found it very difficult to make one. I spent some time on the computer looking at some of my favourite posters - for a jazz festival in New Orleans, and others. I printed small images of those I liked best. In the end I decided what they had in common was mostly bright colours.

Ney Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival

Ivy Hayes

Milton (album cover)

Another influence:
Nótt, the personification of night in Norse mythology, rides her horse in this 19th century painting by Peter Nicolai Arbo.

This led to sketches of jazz players and ideas about making a poster with cherubs (I posted these in an earlier post by mistake).

I have learnt that I am not good enough to use the computer to cut and paste images. Putting it all together was done with tracing paper. I liked moving the figures around on bits of tracing paper until I was happy with the scene.  The function of my printer that can reduce or enlarge like a photocopier was also useful. 
However to decide on the final images, I had scanned my drawing and turned it in slightly different visuals.




















Jazz 1
jazz 2




At this stage, I prefer "Jazz 1" as an image, but I'm not sure where the text will go.  Having no experience of making posters, I looked at the kind of thing people write on theirs:

Jazz Funk
FRIDAY 9th APRIL
8 TIL LATE
THE SANDPIT CLUB, OHIE...
TEL 669 741859






JAZZ
At the
Spotted Dog
Every
       Tuesday
                8:30 pm
Alcester St Digbeth B120NH
Drinks discounts for students
       and musicians.
Hot food Available for £1:50             etc.

Here is my poster.  I have used the computer to add text as I think it may be done, this is only to give an idea of what it could be like.  




The original painting has been made with acrylics, which I am just starting with. I still experience technical problems just to apply the paint smoothly!  I also added pencil and graphite. Unfortunately, the graphite doesn't scan well and some of the shading does not show.

It is worth noting that for the first time, I am proud of the result, despite all its little problems!











SKETCHBOOK EXTRACTS