Assignment 4: Bringing it all together

Brief

This assignment aims to bring together the work you have made from all of the project exercises together in one composite image, by incorporating elements from the areas in illustration covered in this project. Therefore, you can create an image including your architectural, botanical and fashion illustration.

For this assignment imagine that your local tourist board has commissioned you to produce a series of illustrations that celebrate aspects of local culture.

Base your illustrations on real local events, locations and people. In this way you can incorporate images of:

• people

• clothing

• spaces

• objects

• buildings

• trees and plants and locations.
  

Try to take photographs to use as reference material. Produce three pieces of finished artwork, at least one of which should be in colour.

Capture a sense of place through drawing from life, although you can also focus on the usage or purpose of the chosen place, or you capture the interactions and behaviours of people within it.

The style of the artwork is up to you, but the tourist board wants something that portrays vitality and life. They want to see people at a destination, engaging with activities or enjoying themselves taking in the views.

Research

I wanted to research a little before drawing/painting in public, I wanted to learn how to create atmosphere and life into the sketches and in public; I took a look online (and re-watched some James Gurney videos) and came across a video by Marco Bucci.

The easiest way of sketching is capturing scenes in small thumbnails, this way by starting small it'll be easier to capture the shapes of the scene. From there, creating small shapes with a square brush of the buildings allows the piece to open up; doing this with colours that relate to the scene at hand builds dimension and interest straight away.

Capturing light and tones are extremely important, you can do an under-painting/wash of colour to start with and that allows the chosen colour to shine through the additional paints. From there add darker tones to indicate shadows, then mid-tones to capture additional details.

If you keep it loose to start off with you can tighten up the structure with small details to build up a better foundation and structure; for me, I'll start off with a sketch since I'm not confident enough to start straight to paint.

Going forward, I will use watercolour and I'll start off with pencil to capture the initial foundations.

Sketching from life/Reference photos

I decided to go to the outlet to get some inspiration since I didn't have any events to go to, I tried my best to capture what I could with, it was extremely difficult to get details with people since everyone was moving to quickly-- I managed to capture a couple sitting in the first sketch, and when I went to sketch them further along on the page they moved on their way.

I wanted to capture exactly what I was seeing for the final piece, so I took a few more references just in case and I took a long walk around just to feel the vibe of the place. It was calm and when I sat down and waited every now and then, I would look up and see birds flying in the sky. The greenery walls were beautifully green and full, and the sun (at the start) was warm and bright-- eventually it did get cloudy and started to get a little miserable so I had to stop sketching and head home to paint up the three illustrations.

Final Pieces

The final pieces were created using watercolour, gouache, acrylic and ink brush pen; I really wanted to capture the structures and the objects- I did want to capture the people however it was surprisingly not busy.

Evaluation

I really loved this assignment, I can see so much improvement in my work and seeing what I am capable makes me very emotional. I am going to evaluate each image then speak about the assignment as a whole.

For the first illustration, I captured a row of shops as people walk passed a coffee/pastry booth, I wanted to capture the structure as I am still uncomfortable with doing buildings-- so this was to push my out of my comfort zone.

I tried to capture different tones as the shops were under shade and the booth was in the light, I did this by washing the background with navy watercolour then attempted to use yellow for the foreground. It wasn't as effective here as it was in the other illustrations.

This was one of the least favourite illustrations as I wasn't confident in doing such a busy illustration, after laying down watercolour and going back to do the people it started to turn muddy and I decided to stop working it before I made things worse.

I used lines to capture detail and structure with the brush pen and focused on shapes rather than what "should" be there and this technique worked best in the final illustration; it's a decent illustration but not one of the best.

The second illustration I am really fond of, I focused on values-- using yellow for the bright areas and navy for the darker areas. I wanted to keep this bright since I focused on what the mood was like, with the warmth of the sun on the white "tents", although it started to cloud up at this point.

I had to use acrylic paint for the sun since the gouache was lost in the watercolour at that point, even though it should be white I feel like the yellow gives the illustration a summery vibe. The shadow under the tents is really effective, I'm glad I was able to pick out the right colour for underneath and overall the colours somewhat compliment each other.

I was almost done with this image when it felt like it was missing something, so I thought back to when I was walking around the outlet and remembered all the beautiful birds that flew above the outlet, and I wanted to incorporate that into the illustration. I am so glad that I did this since personally what I feel when I look at this illustration is content and free-- tied first with the last illustration.

The last illustration really captures what the outlet is like, I feel like I effective capture the structure of the building (and somewhat accurately), I used a yellow under-painting to the buildings and the ground and blue for the sky, from there I focused on the darks with navy in the building windows and the left-hand side building. After that I used greens, yellows, creams to capture all the landscape with the intent that it had a colour scheme, like James Gurney.

After that, I wanted to capture details which I did with watercolour and an ink brush pen, little marks to indicate doors, mannequins, leaves, flowers, people-- the reference and the colour sketch helped so much with this illustration, and I feel like that's what made this illustration the most effective.

I didn't expect to do well with this assignment since my struggles is background, landscapes and detail, however this has created a stepping-stone for me. The illustration all flow together as I tried to stick with similar colours and stuck with the techniques for each of them, I feel like if I had more time I would've liked to have done an actual event-- but with my job it doesn't allow me to do so.

Picking up techniques from James Gurney, Marco Bucci, with the exercises and with the research tasks I did; it slowly built up confidence in exploring different styles and techniques that lead me to this assignment.

Update

After sharing these final three illustrations online on Instagram and TikTok, the actual business (outlet) I painted interacted with the pieces, and shared the illustrations personally on their Facebook-- and possibly, maybe, something else in store for those illustrations.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGef9LgEv/

1 Marco Bucci, Youtube 'Travel Sketching - Capturing the Feel of a Place', May 22, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T06k-vBVY8o Accessed Mar 9th, 2024