Experiments

Unfortunately I don't have all of my experiments here as some were also a part of my children's book project and I forgot to scan them before handing them in. The two here were painted directly into Photoshop, which is incredibly difficult and I definitely need a lot more practice with, I also need to start collecting textures, as the brickwork and wood just look terrible and unrealistic. Used some of the spaces that I'd drawn earlier as reference.

Object Drawing

A few drawings of head and facial feature sculptures, concentrating on accuracy of drawing and tone.
My use of tone is getting better but still needs a lot of work, especially when using pencil, which I tend to be very messy with and I've yet to figure out how to fix it.

Cotswold Wildlife Park

  The previous Giraffe studies were a big help when drawing them from life, I was able to very quickly jot down the pose. As I haven't drawn many animals before I decided to collect a few sketches while I was there, they all turned out fairly good and I don't think I need to devote too much time to animal drawing as I seem to have a decent handle on it, studying skin, fur and feather colours and textures would be quite useful however and something I should look into.

Giraffe Study

I have a commission to for a Giraffe painting so prior to drawing one for real at the Cotswold Wildlife Centre I decided to draw a few from photographs on the internet so I could get a better idea of how to draw them.

More Nero Drawings

Another drawing session in Nero, this time I was concentrating on the space rather than characters, although I did draw one of the more interesting customers who I could use for a character later on. I've much improved at drawing spaces, I used to have a lot of trouble getting things in the correct position in relation each other but other than some awkward angles for the walls it looks fine and can easily be used to inform other illustrations.

More Tower

The intent was to draw the tower again, showing a story of two individuals talking, I wanted to create some mystery a get camera angles more like a movie that a person following the characters. These aren't really finished enough to say if it was a success but there is a good start in the first one, the detached camera angle creates some mystery, I think it could be closer however, cutting out the stair railings, I could do with attempting this again.

Journey from Imperial Gardens Map

The first Task was to draw a map from the Imperial Gardens, I wanted to do something a little different than an over head map of roads so I tried to make a two diminutional view from the side, this was a little weird looking and in retrospect an overhead view with drawings of he spaces placed oolong the route would have been better. It took me a few attempts to get the route correct, I seemed to get a few pieces turned around in my head and I ultimately needed more viewpoints and areas along the route; I had drawn with a narrative purpose in mind and it wasn't too useful for this process. Another attempt at this could provide better results, the narrative using these drawing is underway and will be in a separate post.

Journey from Imperial Gardens

The intention was to draw route from the Imperial Gardens to Francis Close Hall Campus, I only managed to make it as far as the promenade. My first attempts were very close up views, they didn't give much sense of scale or space and would be useless for illustrating any kind of journey. I had a few more attempts at drawing the gardens until I was happy that I was capturing a broad enough view of the space and then continued this toward the Promenade.In doing so I tried a new technique of drawing in light grey pen before black, this gave me a better control over tone and makes early mistakes less noticeable next to the corrected black pen lines, although it's probably not very useful for drawing very quick, as when drawing moving figures. The main problem I can see with these is the lack of any figures in context, I attempted a few but at that scale and with all the pen lines they promptly got lost and are hard to make out even when you know where they are, I could try using a different colour next time as even a simple stick figure shape could help to show the scale.

Birmingham Museum

I sketched a few interesting things around Birmingham Museum, unfortunately I wasn't very focused that day and I didn't get a lot done and the sketches I have aren't amongst my best. There was little purpose to what I was drawing and I regret at not trying to stick to my previous plan of drawing people and then the objects they were looking at; the objects could have also been given more context and drawing the space they were in could have been more useful both as practice and reference.

Hannah Poses

Some drawings of Hannah, the purpose was to draw each other posed to show certain emotions, unfortunately due to trouble figuring out poses and slow drawing speeds there's not much here.
Even worse, the pieces that I drew using these has gone missing, I will upload it here as soon as I find it. The sketches were useful for their purpose and this exercise could do with being repeated with a wider range of emotions and expressions.

Tower Studies

 The tower is a very interesting place to draw, it has a lot of different materials in it's construction and there are newer additions to the original, gothic styled structure. Due to the interesting space and range of elements I can look at I've decided to do a few studies of the tower, with the intention of having a resource for future illustrations. I started with a floor plan of the tower and then experimenting with looking from different angles and distances as well as getting an accurate drawing of the space. I also had a look at the additions to the building like pipes, wires, electrical boxes and other things that are out of place with the rest of the old building, I think these are useful to draw as while they aren't typically noticed their absence would be noticeable.

Mystery in the Tower

 The intentions was to draw a sequence showing mystery, I drew a figure moving through a space, up the stairs of the tower at FCH. I chose viewpoints that suggested the viewer was moving away from the figure whilst trying to keep him in sight, I then pulled the view back to show the figure that was moving away. I think it's effective making you wonder who the figure is and who's behind the viewpoint, unfortunately the effect is diminished by how messy the drawings are, especially the shading which is a bit slapdash and doesn't properly convey where the dark tones are.

St Fagans Drawings

 Some sketches form St Fagans trip, there was no particular intention to these images, I was mainly looking for things that I might like to use as the basis for other illustrations. The blacksmith was particularly interesting to draw, although difficult due to the movement, I plan to go back and draw here again, perhaps do a wider view drawing of the workshop and some more detailed drawings of the blacksmith.