Final 3 Article Images

Final Images!

Here I added some yellow to each of the animals because I felt that they could very easily get lost in their habitat here. This is intentional partly because that is why they are how they are and how they stay alive however I needed to increase their visibility and thought the bright yellow did this slightly.

With these 2 Collages I had made the real items x2 larger because it was so much easier to add more detail to them. I then scanned them in, cropped and rotated them and shrunk them to the correct size. I also fiddled around with the vibrancy settings on photoshop to make them as striking as possible. I really think that these are a step more sophisitcated than the other mock ups that I had made which look fun. Adding home made paper definitely helped achieve this but also the restrain to limit the colours to 2 helped simplify this as well. 

I ended up choosing this linocut because it looks the most professional. All of the prints are printed well (still leaving some texture thought) and I think that this slightly darker paper behind makes it more bold. This is a very different style to the other 2 and I am not sure how an commissioner would feel if I submitted these together... This is definitely a functional image and is very simple but communicates its message clearly-sometimes simple is better!

FEEDBACK

Photoshop plants

PHOTOSHOP

Photoshop is something which I am not familiar with so these photoshop workshops have been exploding my brain with information. I have learnt that I need to work on my patience and take particular care when pressing buttons.

These are the 2 plants drawings I was editing:

And these are my 4 outcomes:

Article brief development

Development of Article Brief

I started my design process by highlighting my article for all the different animals included and then drew them. This is because I have somehow avoided drawing animals forever! These turned out to be loose drawings, loosely painted (watercolour) but yes they were drawn from reference because at current it is important to the way I work. 

I think my favourite of these drawings is the wild boar. He has definitely got a character and I like the suggestions of the hair but also the brush strokes underneath.

Roughs

Firstly I did a few quick thumbnail sketches just to get some ideas down on paper before I moved onto making the larger images.

From the article I got a general gist of what it was trying to say but because my brain works a bit crazy I looked at the imagery portrayed in each paragraph (jumping around) and wanted to create an image to represent this. Under each of the roughs I have put the quote which illustrates my inspiration.

At this point I didn't manage to create more designs for the portrait brief-partly because I ran out of paragraphs to visualise but more honestly because I got distracted with my collage...

I have chosen these 3 designs to be my ultimate:

Collage!

One night at about 3 in the morning I had the idea that I must collage! I had some images already made of fish and lobsters and just wanted to collage! I went into uni and whilst everyone was doing their roughs I just got side-tracked with my collaging. However whilst i was making these mock ups it totally slipped my mind to keep them to the proportions of the brief so I need to refigure that out.

This is definitely a direction I wish to pursue with this project. However since re-reading the brief i have discovered that I must limit my colours to 2. 

I have decided which 3 images I would like to make however 2 of them are collage based and the other is print so if possible I need make them into a trip-tage. A possibility for this is them all using the same colour palette if possible to bind them as they are different mediums. Also the 3rd design communicates in a different way to the collages. They say "the natural world is beautiful and we should reconnect to it" and the 3rd design says "look at the action that has been taken". I am not sure that this is a typical way to communicate my article but I have been reassured that if it were a real commission and editor would still be interested in a collage portraying natures beauty to draw the reader in as an alternative to communicating an intellectual image. 

Now I need to refine my 3 chosen designs, make them simpler, use them in the right proportions and begin testing my processes.

To start this I began to create different paper: (I haven't got a lot of blue to show because I cut it up for the background)

Here I was experimenting with the layout and positioning of what to remove, what to leave, what more to add, how to simplify. Something I did change was that I liked the introduction of light to add some lightness to the heavy background (and it looks like light reflecting on a rock pool) however it was a bit too bright white so I added some yellowy splurges on just to break it up a bit...

3rd Image
Here I was responding to the quote "The Borders Trust has bought 3000 Hectares of bar mountainside and planted thousands of native trees". I thought that a good response to this would be to divide the mountain into a before and after.
I experimented with 2 different mountainsides. One has half brown and half white mountain (with lumps for rocks) and the other is just a bare mountain side with a line down it. I managed to get a really rugged edge by accident actually. The lino was quite old and crumbly so it ripped off into a mountain like edge which was unintentional but I really like!

Here I had some lino that was in the shape of a round stamp. I thought this was perfect size however here I was a numpty and carved out the image so therefore as it printed inverse had a lot of green in circles round it...

Learning from this mistake I cut the lino out the other way around however I left a ring around it which still printed. Also I printed it on the brown side of the mountain and it got lost in the brown...

Then I cut even more out and was happy with the result of my trees print. I feel that they are a good representation of a SYMBOL of a tree but I still didn't think this was a finished result...

I printed it on the other lino mountain design but the rocks printed stronger than the trees and therefore the perspective didn't work...

Then I had the light bulb moment idea to print onto some slightly coloured paper. I rushed back into uni and pulled out some grey/brown (as shown) and some brown. Here even though the trees and the background didn't print thoroughly I feel that it gives it a rustic feel as there is texture to it. Here again I am back to everything being handcrafted which I wanted to try not to be so apparent...

Line Quality

LINE
Andrew Loomis "The way you see it and prefer to draw it" and thinks that the Key Principles of Line are:
*Limiting an area or space
*Having intrinsic beauty
*Representing through symbol or thought
*Portraying form through contour or edge
*Illustrating grey or tonal graduation
*Creating a design or arrangement
*Directing the eye

This is some of the work I did today studying line. Here is experimentation with different ways of make making in the media of ink in various forms and different possible ways to vary the line drawn. This was a challenging exercise but it became even more challenging when we tried to apply one of these lines to a portrait as there are then multiple things to consider as your pen goes onto paper.

I think exploring different ways of making lines is important because it can add variety to the way you draw and make the drawings interesting, aesthetic and engaging-they have a tone of voice!

Illumination initial response

ERROR!
Here we had the task of communicating a word through small thumbnail drawings. I found this quite difficult (hence why I don't have a large amount of images). This creative process however made me go past the literal meanings of the word and exemplify images of examples of human mistakes and errors.


Rebuilding our relationship with the natural work can re-animate our own lives, as well as the eco system.

That is the title I ended up with! I had a very strong reaction to this title. This theme has been something I have struggled to concentrate through in both Science and German at school. I found it very difficult engaging with this article.
Trough reading this and thinking about this topic I realised that I am terrified of animals and that this strongly impacts my relationship with nature. I have had a few bad run-ins with animals (owl landing on my head, pack of deer chasing me and bitten by a dog) and this has really shaped how I feel about them. Today I connected that I hate the dark because I don't know which animals are lurking where and the same with being alone outside. I do however appreciate the beauty of landscapes and find forests in autumn especially pleasing.
So, therefore I had a block with this brief when we were discussing it in groups as I hated it, to the extent I asked for another article.
After some thought I decided that I would face this. If I were to get this as a live brief in a job I want to be able to tackle this. I have avoided ever drawing animals so it is probably about time that I try them out-or at least some elements of nature. Perhaps I can even include my feelings into my 3 pieces of work because the article discussing apathy for nature?
I also think that this could be a chance to be inspired by Mark Hearld who does some gorgeous collages of nature and landscapes.
I SHALL PERSEVERE THROUGH!

Final Poster!

Reflecting back on this it looks quite basic with a lot of the space not used. Also my faces in the light blue pen for the faces isn't very effective as you can't see them very well and therefore I should have experimented with alternative mediums for communicating the characters. Perhaps if the house was a bit larger or if the brief allowed the page to be landscape the images could have been larger and therefore more visible?

I decided to use a light yellow paper because brighter would have brought the attention away from the small, details of the line drawings. I chose yellow because it is a complimentary colour with blue.
I wanted to have very basic lines for the house and the tree because they are not the focal part of the poster however they are important to the structure so I used a thicker marker.

My revelation here was the discovery of the fine liner. This is a reasonably new concept for me because Bic Biros are my go too however from my practice design layout I decided that the line was too thin and not eye catching/bold enough. Furthermore rather than purely coloured pencils I progressed onto colouring the plant pots in felt tip pen as they are important but also used 2 other shades of coloured pencil to accentuate the "thing" that is killing the plant. However I chose not to apply colour to the whole poster.

The feedback here pretty much said that they liked the layout design and the way that the vignettes are incorporated into a scene. Also although I don't think that the faces are as clear as I would ideally wished they were picked up and they liked that incorporation of character.

Design Layout for Poster

I decided that I liked the use of the plant image in the title and cemented the amount of rooms in the house and where each thing was exactly going to be placed. As is evident each design becomes more developed.

Here I introduced colour into the images. I limited the amount of images and confirmed their placing. Here I also used one of my fonts.

This was a further development. Here I began selecting which of the images worked the best and began placing them. 

Here I began to develop my design. 

Here I was experimenting with different possible type faces that I could use for my title. I decided to use the bottom one because it looks a bit plant like, however I do quite like the typography with the top cut off as it fits quite well with the brief of how to kill a plant.

This was the ideas of me and my partner when we combined ideas helped each other. This is where my development began of having a scene of a garden and a house.