Exercise - Character Development

I searched through magazines and the internet for examples of different characters.

Lovers - couples , wedding

Nurse, housewives, mother, interfering neighbour!

Old man, Scientist

Beggar, hero, wise man, Glasgow drunk!

Foreign business executive/prince

Butler

When I read the brief to create characters. I was uncertain what style to adapt - cartoon, life like etc but I began by doing some sketchbook work and brainstorming some ideas.

I produced a variety of different characters including a lady, a bride, a Parisian lady, a girl who was ill, a gran/super gran and as I was reading a book with a small girl in it namely "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake", I tried to sketch a character of her.
Some of these were more successful than others but I then decided to try focus on one character and had the idea to portray a homeless guy. I tried to think about the scruffiness associated with homeless people and produced some ink and pen sketches trying to show his clothes as rugged / torn and his unruly appearance.

Lovers - a couple

Young fashionable lady - a bit too static - no movement

Bride and lady ideas

Ill girl - weak 

Homeless guy

Granny 

Super Gran!

Character from book - the particular sadness of lemon cake - girl

These show more movement - as I tried to picture scenes from the book and draw my character acting them out.

Paris lady 

Homeless guys 

Supergran

I've been looking at the work of Quentin Blake and really love his sketchy and loose work which really gets across the characters yet with quick minimal detailing and tried to bear this in mind when creating my homeless man.

I quite like my character "Pete" and tried drawing him from different viewpoints with different expressions. I can imagine that if I was to take this further and produce a book or multiple pieces with the same character I would become very familiar with how the character would look in different situations and positions. 

I think its a real talent being able to capture the essence of a character in a drawing and for me the ones which I think are most successful are often fairly simplistic drawings but with a few clever pen strokes and features the character comes to life such as those by illustrators including Quentin Blake and Oliver Jeffers. 

Exercise -Visual Distortion

For this exercise we were asked to produce an illustration of a dog or cat which would be relatively realistic and convey some aspect of its characteristics/ personality.
I chose a few images of Tibetan mastiffs and produced some watercolour and pencil drawings trying to show the soft fur of the puppies and the smiley playful features of the dogs.

The next stage involved producing a collage of the dog and asked us to be experimental and try distorting / pushing the boundaries. For the first image I tore magazine cutting of a woman's hair and used it to represent the fur/coat of the dog and selected eyes from a model and a lampshade to represent the nose. This produced quite an unusual drawing but I think its still quite recognisable as a dog even with the extended limbs and funny hair do!

I came across the work of Peter Clark who produces amazing collage including some great ones of animals and dogs in particular using found papers and textures. These look like the animal with the proportions recognisable but are distinguished by the different tones and colourings achieved by the papers and collage.
I wanted to try achieve a similar effect and took my image of the mastiff puppy and worked different cuttings into the shape using a tartan shirt as the animals body, gardening pictures for the body and other cuttings.
I was quite pleased with the final result for a first attempt.

Peter Clark collage 

Online image - Peter Clark Collage Image Available from http://www.peterclarkcollage.com/pages/dogs3.html Accessed 5th January 2013

The next part involved producing a drawn representation of your collage then trying to incorporate the dog into a scene or narrative. I tried to draw from both my collages and to me the effect of the tartan collage reminded me of like a dog cape or coat and I had the idea of a dog playing in the rain wearing a tartan coat and wellies! To try and incorporate this to a bigger scene I remembered about an illustration I had outlined a while ago of a girl wearing a raincoat so I incorporated this image and added text which I think could be used as a part of a kids book or illustration.

I also experimented with the idea of the dog being in the hair salon based on my other collage and added it to a background of a hair salon. However,  I wasn't very happy with the actual illustration although I think the idea was okay. 

I really enjoyed experimenting with collage and it let me see the huge opportunity to use it in future illustrations and to be more open to ideas and making adaptations through working on a particular drawing. 

Exercise - Tattoos

I must admit when I read the brief for this exercise I instantly cringed. I’ve always been pretty squeamish and the thought of having a tattoo permanently on your skin really freaks me out so I had to limit the amount of images I looked at!

The word “tattoo” apparently comes from the Tahitian word which means to ‘to mark something’ and is a form of body modification which involves inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment.

Tattooing has been practiced for centuries in many cultures, particularly in Asia, and spread throughout the world. Tattooing was widespread among Polynesians and among certain tribal groups in Africa, Borneo, Cambodia, Europe, Japan, the Mentawai Islands, MesoAmerica, New Zealand, North America and South America, the Philippines, and Taiwan Despite some taboos surrounding tattooing, the practice continues to be popular in many parts of the world.

Modern tattooing in the Western world has its origins in sixteenth through eighteenth century maritime expeditions, which promoted contact between explorers and the american tribes and Polynesians they encountered. The Polynesian practice, especially, became popular among European sailors, who took the Samoan word tatau to describe the actual tattoo. As sailors traveled abroad and returned home with tattoos inscribed on their bodies, tattoos began to appear in mainstream European, and eventually America.

Online image Accessed via http://www.thelisticles.com/people-and-politics/awesome-tattoos-guys-should-get/ 4th January 2012

The exercise was to work on a Mum tattoo which could also be translated to a greetings card. The “I Love Mum” tattoo is quite iconic and it conjures up images of the bright red heart with a banner with the word “Mum” or "Mom". This type of tattoo became popular during WWII when sailors got tattoos to show achievements and the “mother” or “mom” tattoo were a reminder of home, Remy 2000.

Tattoos in many cultures show rites of passage, status and rank and can be used to show religious and spiritual beliefs. People choose to be tattooed for artistic, cosmetic, and religious reasons, and to symbolize their belonging to or identification with particular groups.

Today tattoos are a part of global and western fashion common amongst a variety of age groups, economic classes and with both men and women and are seen as an acceptable form of expression. According to one survey, a fifth of all British adults have now been inked (as contemporary usage has it). Among 16- to 44-year-olds, both men and women, the figure rises to 29%. Only 9% of over 60s have one, according to a survey of 1,000 adults by the Ask Jeeves website, but 16% of people aged between 30 and 44 have two. Likwise all sorts of unlikely people including teachers and politicians have been tattooed.

The rise of celebrity culture has aided the popularity of tattooing with celebrities including David Beckham and Angelina Jolie being well known for their tattoos.

Tattoos are increasingly diverse but popular themes include old style fine line ink work, tribal and ethnic designs, and Japanese and Asian inspired designs. 

Tribal tattoos

Online image Accessed via http://www.thelisticles.com/people-and-politics/awesome-tattoos-guys-should-get/ 4th January 2012

Angelina Jolie - Tattoos with latitude and longitude of the birthplaces of her adopted children.

A few weeks back I had began to look more at typography and Typographical illustrations including the work of Sarah Coleman and Kate Forrester. I also really like the work of Johanna Basford and Marian Baynes and for this exercise thought it would be appropriate to take influence from some of their styles in a “Mum” tattoo.

Marian Baynes

Online image accessed  http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/bantjes.html Accessed 4th January 2013.

Example of Sarah Coleman's work 

Online image accessed http://www.thedonutproject.com/inspiration/sarah-coleman/ - Accessed 4th January 2012

I began in my sketchbook playing with different variations of the letters into different shapes. The most obvious shapes were hearts and flowers which I thought reinforced the role of a mum. I used pen, paint and ink to experiment and decided early on that my tattoo would be limited in colour or use only black and white as I much prefer this and wanted something relatively simple yet appealing.

Example of tattoos 

Although I like some of the highly decorative typographic work of the illustrators above I was aware I didn't want to over complicate my design. I then began some more experiments on paper trying different calligraphy styles of writing and designs.

I liked some of the heart style designs incorporating the letters but wasn't totally satisfied having the final design as a heart. I tried various experiments of this in Photoshop repeating the heart to make a flower design. Whilst I thought this would work as a design on a card I wasn't certain that it would be the best to be a final tattoo and thought might be a bit complex especially given the size.

At this point I asked my mum her opinion on some of the designs. She is very anti - tattoos but said if she was to have one she would prefer it to be recognisable as saying mum rather than a subliminal features of a design.
I then went back and tried some more calligraphic writing styles and scanned to Photoshop.
Working with black ink I wasn't sure that the letters were strong enough once scanned and thought that perhaps the text could be stronger. I went back and tried to tighten up my calligraphy and was able to slightly refine the lettering making it stronger. I also decided to add some red to the heart design.

I then did a bit of Photoshop clean up and produced some samples of it as a greetings card using different pattern overlay effects. I photoshopped the tattoo onto a picture of my mum to see how it would look as a tattoo and think it would work. I know that the illustration is fairly basic and based on the word quite literally but I think that this works best in this instance as some of my other designs I felt were a bit predictable and fussy although I guess this is subjective.

Overall I think this was a useful exercise for me as its made me think I'd really like to experiment more with typographic style illustrations and calligraphy incorporating words and image.
The process for this exercise involved a bit of reappraisal of ideas along the way as I initially was trying to create a more abstract MUM design but couldn't quite get something which I was happy enough with so opted for a more traditional take on the exercise. I think in this instance it would be good to talk to the client/person setting the brief and offer them some alternatives and get some pointers on what they would prefer.

Bibliography
http://www.designboom.com/history/tattoo_history.html - Accessed 4th January 2012
Henley, J (July 2012)  The Rise and rise of the tattoo http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jul/20/tattoos Accessed 4th January 2012

Remy Melina, (May 2010)  Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/502-are-i-love-mom-tattoos-still-popular.html - Accessed 4th January 2012

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattoo