Assignment 1: A Week In The Life

Brief

Keep your sketchbook or notebook with you for a normal week. Of course, everybody’s normal week is different, and it is this unique experience that this exercise can document.

Make written notes and sketch or doodle events that happen to you, things people you know say or do, and ideas and images that occur to you, maybe while you’re daydreaming or actually dreaming. Try to keep the narrative spontaneous and allow your random thoughts, ideas and feelings to drive and direct the narrative. 

The aim of the exercise is to produce an outcome as authentically close to your everyday, lived experience as possible. Try to enjoy the process, and see what happens from randomly generating written and visual material.

Once you have amassed some writing and images, try to organise them into a narrative. This could be a structured comic story, or it could be sketchbook pages. It may not make sense to anyone but yourself, but the important thing is to see what happens when you don’t overthink or over-plan a creative process. Think of the assignment as a semi-organised doodle and an opportunity to have some fun!

The Start of the Week (Initial Thoughts)

Starting up uni again, and my first task is to draw my week, doodling, daydreaming whichever came to mind or whatever was happening. I wanted to ensure that I captured what felt right so I took my sketchbook everywhere, but I also didn't want to plan or research-- I wanted it to feel spontaneous as possible (all while enjoying the process)

The Pages

The End of the Week

After drawing every day with whatever was on my mind throughout that day, I found myself realising that I was drawing myself a lot. Very self-obsessed. I also found myself trying to create myself in 3rd person(?) and without using a mirror and with different angles which I never thought I could do for starts but it also put into perspective how fun it was to create like this.

End result (Flipping pages)

The end result was to organize them into a narrative, however I quite like the spontaneous result of my drawings as the two pages was the whole day-- unless you want a narrative of how many times I napped in a week.

Evaluation

After completing the week and my research tasks, I thought about what this assignment has given me. This assignment has made me realise how much I liked the story-telling aspect of drawing/illustration and documenting simple things that give me joy; I always used to draw what I liked in my sketchbook like certain video games, drawing faces/people or creating characters, but I've never taken time to just draw what was on my mind, and since doing it I feel a sense of clarity on what I want to do.

I wanted to keep it simple so I kept to drawing in simple pencil, and I also wanted to pick up the sketchbook when I was inspired or wanted to say something, or when I was bored; so for example, the drawing of me on the sofa drawing was while I was watching YouTube, I had an impulse to create me relaxing in that moment since that felt right.

When it came to being spontaneous, I was at work on the Wednesday and someone mentioned a date and I went to see if I was free when I saw the kings birthday was on my calendar, from that a conversation was said and I thought it was amusing-- so I drew it there and then.

When I took to YouTube halfway through that week, I found a sketchbook series of artists' showing their work, and I noticed that many of theirs' are different, but still referenced their everyday lives; which made me think that maybe growing as an artist technically and creatively, is predominantly about drawing from life and thoughts more so than constantly studying faces and bodies everyday.

To end this, I wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment and looking forward to projects to come!

Final Result?

I was thinking about the aim of this task and I wasn't sure if my previous final pages would've sufficed being the final result, and if it's what was expected. Therefore, I analysed what common theme was throughout the week, and so I noticed. Me. That's when I thought of this as a final piece- sort of. I thought it was amusing when I threw it together.

It's silly and done before but I just thought it was amusing since I drew a few expression faces of mine, something simple and not too over-thought.