The set, series, sequence brief was the first brief we were given during the beginning of the visual language module. When we were given the brief I was really excited to begin drawing and creating images as up until this point we hadn't had a brief that was purely related to developing visual skills. As well as this I liked the format of producing set numbers of images or a guided number of images under a certain theme because it gave the idea generation for images a purpose and a direction. Out of the words we were given I chose science and compiled a list of areas of science that I could look at in detail before beginning my approach to the brief and creating the illustrations
During the brief something that was really emphasised aside from interpreting the word we have chosen is how we choose media and that we should try and explore and experiment with different mediums whilst creating the images. I brainstormed some choices of media that I could use when creating the illustrations, and wanted to experiment with as much as possible to see what could be achieved. Throughout the sketchbook, I used; pencil, pencil crayon, brush pen, fine liner, marker, water colour, acrylic and digital to produce the images. What I've learnt from this exploration of media is the overall versatility of media when creating images, any media can be used to create virtually any idea if it's done in the right way and it has the potential to look better or more appropriate based on how the media is executed in combination with the idea being put onto paper.
Some examples of how media was used to create various images;
Deep Space
This image was quite straight forward, I looked at some images of space and found its almost unnatural blackness eerie. I thought the best way to achieve this solid black colouring was to use a thick layer of acrylic. I had to take into consideration here that the paper of the sketchbook was quite thin, so I took a sheet of thicker paper and cut it to size before painting that and placing it into the sketchbook. After the layer of acrylic had completely tried, I took some white acrylic and tainted it slightly with a drop of black to make a very light grey, I then used a toothbrush to flick the white acrylic onto the black background, implementing the idea of distant stars and galaxies.
Tree
The tree was made using a mixture of pencil crayon and watercolour, I started out by looking at references for trees and sketching out the outline of it very loosely. After this, I started to build up the texture and shape of the tree using pencil crayon. I found pencil crayon worked well at first because it has a very grainy texture, similar to that of a tree. After this, I added some touches of water colour so add more depth and tone to the image with some darker and lighter spots, I finished the image by adding some final details and adding some background to the image. It's also worth noting, because I used watercolour I again chose to do it on thicker paper before putting it into the sketchbook so that the thin sketchbook paper didn't crease of curve due to the water.
Skull
I did two versions of this skull just to experiment a little with the image. I started out by trying to sketch a detailed copy of a reference I found online. I added shadow to the deeper crevices of the skill and attempted to make it sit in a 3D space as well as I could. I used pencil here so I could almost retail a level of sketchiness whilst adding the finer details, I also though the grey, monochromatic property of the pencil would work well when portraying the skull. Once I was happy with the level of detail, trying to not spend too long on it, I added some touches of fine liner to highlight small sections of cracks and a darker shadow. I then scanned in the image and used photoshop to paint over some very washy ink like tones to make it feel more dynamic as a whole.
Lecture Theatre
This in my opinion is one of my more successful images. It's quite a different idea to produce a drawing of a physics lecture as oppose to an object or environment directly linked to the theme of science but I thought it could produce an interesting result. I sketched it out using several references online and then chose to use a brush pen in combination with a fine liner to create a black and white image with no real tones. The result reminded me of a graphic novel or manga style of colouring, where images are made up of black and white tones. I added some finer detail by brushing in a black board behind the lecturer and penning in white some equations on the board.
Astronaut
I produced the drawing of the astronaut digitally using photoshop using mostly my imagination for the suit, but references for the profile of the character. Here I enjoyed experimenting with colour schemes, and working digitally allowed me to experiment freely without sacrificing the image if something didn't look right. In the end I chose a kind of cyan or turquoise colour scheme for the astronaut and enjoyed how different it looked. I also enjoyed working in a digital way rather than a traditional one for the purpose of this image and yielded an interesting aesthetic.
Sun
The image of the sun is one of the more realised images in the sketchbook. The background was made the same way as the deep space image using a black acrylic background and flicking specs of white acrylic over the surface. At first I knew I wanted to produce an image of a sun or a star but I wasn't sure how to approach it so I opted for acrylics to see how it worked. This being a sketchbook brief I was less worried if it went wrong after the idea of using sketchbooks to experiment was introduced to me. I created a thick circle of orange and red paint in the centre of the page before using a dry brush technique to push the paint outwards and create solar flares. The way the dry brush paint moved the half mixed colours worked well at producing a fading effect to emulate very loosely the properties of the sun and the behaviour of solar flares.
Jellyfish
The jellyfish image is one of my preferred images in the sketchbook in a way because of how vaguely it portrays a jellyfish. I used a very obscure range of colours to produce the image, using; orange, purpose, a green / blue and white. Again, this was produced using acrylic and using the dry brush technique and some meticulous painting in the smaller sections I was able to create something that looks quite interesting. The reason for using a dry brush technique here was to try and capture the flow of the tentacles and represent the high number of tentacles the jellyfish in my reference had. I think the reason I like how it turned out was the looseness of it, and it feels very abstract it is due to the choice of media, colours and techniques.
Fish
Finally, I produced a simple pencil drawing of a fish. I tried to use thick, confident lines in order to draw the curvature of the fishes body rather than using loose sketchy lines. In terms of composition I chose a long fish with a curved body to fill the length of the page. Something I also tried to do was use slightly angular lines to capture the shape of the fishes body, so that it had a slight geometric or anatomic feel to the sketch. Using pencil was quite nice at this point because it produced a simple and elegant finished illustration where as the heavy uses of media in previous pieces were quite full and busy.
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