Rob Hodgson
Rob's 'Funny Buggers' zine is full of basic shapes married with texture to create a set of quirky and endearing characters. Each one has their own personality through variables of facial and body features; altering where the elements are placed will give a different personality. A big nose, big ears or a big smiley mouth present a silly and likeable character. A character with a tiny face and a large body equally has a sense of charm about it! I really like how basic texture, mark making and shape has created a breadth of characters for a zine and I can really get a feel for Rob's tone of voice - experimental, nonsensical at times, delightful, eccentric.
Eric Carle
Who doesn't love The Very Hungry Caterpillar? It has been one of my favourite children's books for a very long time and has a wonderful sense of nostalgia and sentimentality attached to each page. As I've grown older, I have begun to look at the work differently and appreciate Carle's practice and way of working. His bright saturated paints sing against the white backgrounds he uses, and the slight variations in paint thickness as it has dried gives a sense of light and shadow. This is particularly charming when considering subject matter of delicate petals or butterfly wings where sunlight may be poking through. There is such a crafting with care and labour of love quality to the pictures which really shows in the precision and execution of the pieces.
Drawing with Shapes
• What can be achieved with shape? Minimal and dynamic results come from flat colour, hard graphic edges and a minimal aesthetic. Often used in a commercial context because of its universal and immediate visual function. People see more, when they see less. Shape can still have its own unique tone of voice when it is generated through analogue methods such as collage, drawing and painting. Through craft, print and digital processes, shape can be used to create highly complex pieces of work with pure form and colours.
• Simplification
• Reduction
• Minimal
• Iconic
• Forms, angles, balance
• What do we mean when we talk about texture? It is accepted that all drawing media produce some sort of visible texture. As image makers it is important to recognise the value of texture and be willing to employ it strategically in order to achieve more authentic and engaging visual results. Texture can imbue value through the aesthetic of analogue processes, complement shape, describe the hand of its maker, create tone and light, improve economy of limited colours, soften hard forms, harmonise composition and appear distressed or antiqued. Making images with shape rather than drawn lines requires us to think differently about how images are made.
• The more I look at my pieces though, the more I love them - and it is this process of reduction and paring back that I need to become comfortable with!
• Just because something is realistic with heaps of detail doesn't make it a better illustration.
• There is something incredibly charming about these basic representations of a strawberry. They are wholly inaccurate and almost childlike in their appearance and that is something I actually want to be experimenting with over the course of the first year of my degree. Less is more and I feel like I have really tapped into something interesting with these paper cuts.
Self Portrait
• I combined the basic shapes, forms and limited colours from this morning's session with the textures and mark making from last week to create a self portrait of myself. I used dry brushes to create my hair, rubbed on the textured wall to create my freckled skin and used a paper towel to blot on my scarf. I had so much fun with this and I think it really shows... even though Tami looks like a bunch of Dorito's! Maybe? Dorito Dog! Quirky!
• I'm much happier with this task's outcome than last week's; where I felt I didn't push myself enough and fell back into the trap of being too intense with the shading details. Also, it's my birthday! So I think my general joy really showed through in my work.
• I love this so much and find it so evocative, endearing and suggestive of children's illustration .
Ongoing Subject / Motif
• This wasn't a requirement, but I was so excited by today's session that I wanted to continue with simplifying objects using minimal shape and colour to see how it would affect my carousel horse research. Ripping paper gave a more DIY and grungy aesthetic whereas using the craft knife created swooping curves for a more proper look. These changes in edges have subtly affected the mood of the character.
• I want to explore these elements further as my work progresses over the year as this is the sort of illustration I want to be creating for picture books. The quirky and offbeat representations of a carousel horse are still perceived as a horse - the components have been edited to become more interesting rather than just exact replicas of what they actually look like. I feel I have made great progress so far in identifying where my setbacks are and embracing new ways of making!
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