So, as I started getting more confident in my work, I started drawing more and more. I decided to do more personal work as I was trying to get a portfolio together to show an art director at London Book Fair[26], and so my final major project work went on the back burner for a while. I also got quite frustrated as the characters weren't looking right, and so I needed a break from them for a while.
I got an iPad Pro[27] and decided to start working on the app Procreate[28] because my parents had an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil[29] and over the Christmas break I had a go with it, and really enjoyed it. I felt it would really help me to draw more often if I had something portable to take around with me that I could draw on. This was possibly the best decision I've ever made, as I feel it has allowed my artistic growth to soar. I can draw digitally pretty much anywhere, and that has really given me a huge boost.
Whenever I feel I need to revamp my style, I always go to self portraits first. I'm not really sure why, but I feel it's probably because I know myself better than anyone else, and I won't ever be offended by something I've drawn of myself.
This portrait was the first thing I was really happy with in a long time. I tried a new style and technique with colouring, adding more texture and stronger line work, and I did really enjoy it. It gave me confidence to get onto other artwork and see what I could push myself with.
After creating something I was really happy with, I really wanted to push it as far as I could, and I also thought about perhaps making a secondary style that would be more editorial. I used so much texture and different pencil brushes to experiment with how colour can be brushed across the surface, taking into account the work of Taryn Knight[19]. I really enjoyed experimenting with this style, and although I still really like it, it definitely helped my other style evolve even further as I started to use more textured brushes.
I also wanted to experiment with flat colour with pattern, like Yelena Bryksenkova[20], so I started trying to mesh the two together, both texture and flat colour with pattern. I really loved creating the background to the second book cover especially, with the layers of clouds and gradient.
My drawing style was taking a life of it's own. The way I drew hair, eyes, noses and hands were all taking on their own style, and I felt more confident with it with every piece. I really love the red blush marks and red noses and ears. It feels like a trademark to my work, and I really do enjoy creating these characters to look like that, so it's almost becoming second nature now to create characters that look like this style.
I now wanted to put that into more practise, and try different types of character.
Here is a drawing of a girl from the forest. This was one of the first images I made where I really loved the result and felt immensely proud of it. I tried to stay loose with the brush strokes and gave myself quite a limited colour palette, and I feel it really worked out well. I started drawing hair and eyebrows with more defined strokes and tried to keep the shading simple.
I tried to keep it even more simple with this piece. It doesn't have a name and isn't based on anything, but I just really felt inspired by ghosts and the Victorian era, so I drew a little girl who was haunted. I used even more defined strokes for her eyebrows and tried making her eyelashes a lighter grey instead of black to see how it would change the image. I feel it makes it much less harsh, which I feel definitely suited the subject matter of this piece.
Again I was just inspired by something completely random, and I loved this colour palette. The teal with the pink I felt really went well together. I didn't have anything in mind when creating this piece, I just started drawing and this was what came out of it.
I love the simplicity of the skeleton and how it doesn't have too much detail, so it really reads well. I also tried adding texture to the dress of the skull lady by using overlapping pencil brush strokes, which I felt worked really well. I kept the tones quite flat and added a spotty background in a dark colour to not distract too far from the characters themselves, but it adds a bit of interest.
London Book Fair was coming up quick, and I really wanted to add some children's picture book pages to it. The first two images were inspired by my niece with my dog and the mischief they get up to together, and the third image is inspired by the idea of a Teddy Bear's Picnic.
I wanted to try out different environments to show first of all that I could do them, but also to test myself and see how well they would come out. I was very happy with how everything looked, and I really enjoyed making some younger looking characters. It was definitely more of a challenge, but one I really wanted to take on. I also tried to add texture and pattern wherever I could to practise those too.
This illustration was something completely different. I wanted to try working inside a silhouette, and see how the limitation would affect the feel of the image. It definitely made getting the flow of the image right much more difficult, but I feel I took on this challenge. I made it so the girl was leaning slightly and there were bushes all curving in towards her, making her the focus of the image. I also added some trees to extend her line at the top, to make the eye bounce around the image better.
I really enjoyed this and wanted to try different characters, but I haven't had time to do that yet. Perhaps in the future it's something to think about.
I also tried a different shading technique on the bushes, having much more flat shading but still adding some texture. I really liked that style, and will try it out again sometime in the future and see how it integrates with my work.
After London Book Fair
So after going to the London Book Fair and speaking to an art director, I was told my style suited older children better and that I should look into more black and white imagery. This scared me, as I had never done black and white before and I wasn't quite sure how I'd approach it. It was completely different to colour, as you're completely relying on the values rather than any hues. I wasn't sure how mixing textures would work either, and so I was quite scared to try it out, but I started trying it.
Here were my initial trials for black and white drawings. I tried both more flat textured hair and then more of a pencil shaded style like I did before, and I found neither were really feeling quite right. I also did find it very hard to find the right values. It was so much more difficult to make people look different, because having just shades of grey was much more limiting than being able to make people wear different colours of the same value.
I then tried some spot illustrations. I started with the homework illustration, and I found I enjoyed it a lot more having just objects to draw. It make finding a style and different a bit easier, as they could be any shade I wanted. things like the pretzels and chocolate bar were nice to try and figure out the values to, and I found it was becoming much more enjoyable.
I decided to draw a house because I wanted to try an environment drawing. Again, the values seemed to be a bit easier to find here. I tried to use lots of different pencil textures and a mixture of outlined and non outlined areas, which I felt really worked well.
Lastly I drew some cake, and I tried stronger line work. I do like it, but I feel perhaps it could've been a bit better achieved without such strong lines for everything. I will probably try and redraw it at some point.
I then tried black and white characters again, taking what I learned from the objects. I wanted to have more texture and less outline, so I decided to shade the hair with a large sponge brush so it had gaps and texture through it, and then I drew over the top with black to add in the hair strands. I really enjoyed doing that, as it had the feel I wanted. I also used different textures for clothing and only drew outlines where objects overlapped each other, and I felt that was really effective as well.
I continued trying out different textures and value combinations, and I now feel much more confident with my black and white work. I now wanted to try the things I'd learned in my black and white work out on my full colour work, such as using the strong lines in conjunction with the flat textures, and see how that looks.
I do feel it's given my work much more of a unique quality. I am really much happier with my work, and although I'm sure it will probably change even more, I'm finally happy with how my work is going and feel it's much more professional than when I started this year. I feel I have a set style and although that may evolve, it's something I can work with and possibly get jobs from, which is a world away from where I was 6 months ago.
Now I need to apply this all to my work for this module and see how it changes my initial designs.
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