Exercise: Interpretation and Communication; suppose we make it different?

Brief

This exercise will take you through a process of working with external content and will continue to build awareness of, and increase confidence to create observed narratives. through processes of editing and stylization.

Throughout this course you will have encountered the word narratives. Narrative lies at the heart of most illustration. It’s a word that is often used interchangeably to the words stories and storytelling. However, narrative doesn’t need to be connected to words or stories in the sense that you may traditionally associate with illustration, such as children’s books or making illustrations that interpret or work alongside of a text.

The words interpretation and communication are pivotal to my own sense of narrative. I see the potential for narrative when any two elements exist together in the same image. As an illustrator, finding ways of suggesting or making connections between these elements through colour or form or how they sit together on the page, is what allows you to enhance a narrative. This process is made possible by the way that the viewer “reads” the image to give it meaning, as well as taking meaning from it. When describing how images are read we often use the term visual literacy and talk about creative or visual languages. Both of these concepts are central to the way that illustrators make images that communicate or convey ideas or messages. The elements in a reportage illustration can be as simple as a brooding sky above a landscape that suggests that a storm is about to hit, a figure sitting on a train half in a trance listening to music, a kite flying high above buildings. As an illustrator I see the process as being one of responding to such elements that I encounter, using a process of editing, selection and drawing to interpret and construct my own versions of them. By being descriptive in the ways that I put them together within my imagery I suggest narratives.

The narrative can be:

• Fun - such as adding an animal drawn in the zoo to a city scene.

• Dramatic - such as putting a figure on a roof of a building, or the Queen in front of the local market stall.

• Descriptive- using weather conditions to suggest a wintery day in a landscape.

• Informative - such as adding a figure in Victorian dress in front of a building from this era.

There are many ways to refine an image and this can be as simple as redrawing what you drew the first time to get the form or idea a little cleaner or clearer. It could also involve how you colour in, layer or systematically apply colour pattern or marks or other embellishments to an image. Refining may be more radical, where you might take a very literal image and turn it on its head by exaggerating, inverting or translating it into a completely different form (e.g. where 122 Illustration 1: Illustration Sketchbooks humans become creatures, words become pictures and pictures become words). Refinement might equally include changing the entire tone, or style, of the image. The possibilities for your sketch drawings are endless and you can take small steps away from their original forms or great leaps to the extremes.

This exercise has a very simple premise to begin this process, which is to take some of your earlier images and put them through a process which changes their visual form. You don’t have to turn them upside down or inside out to do this task well but you are welcome to be as creative as you like. Review the drawings you have made so far for the unit and select three which you think have potential to develop further visually. They don’t have to be good drawings already, in fact if they are only half-realised these are often the best.

Illustration One

For the first illlustration that must be inspired by sketches/drawings in my sketchbook is of a life drawing I did at ComicCon London, two people were standing talking to each other and I sketched them. Recently I drew a little illustration from that, without realising that this exercise would be on the coursework; I turned it into a little illustration of a cat causing mischief to his owner, him standing there fed up with the cat.

From there I went onto Procreate and started adjusting the composition as well as adding colour, I was really inspired by Across the Spiderverse, where it had beautiful moments with watercolour textures and bright colours washing across the screen-- I went for bright washes of colour and an abstract approach to the colour scheme, rather than how I usually approach these designs.

I really like this illustration since it's different (in terms of colour and style) to most of my work and it's allowed me to play with different lighting and adding lots of texture to the work The colours are vibrant and fun, there are some gorgeous textures of the "brush" with soft constructs done in the "pencil". I tried playing with colour and tone to help the composition and it works, everything that I lighting in colour captures your eyes first. What I would improve next time is changing the expression slightly of the character, I tried to make him look annoyed while talking, however it just seems like he's nonchalant.

Illustration Two

For this illustration, I wanted to create an entire new illustration, it originated from personal exercise that I did, where I had to paint different shapes in watercolour and create things from them. That's where Ned came along, I did a little character sheet a while ago and I came up with a little story for him.

Once this exercise came along, I filtered through my sketchbook and picked out these sketches that I wanted to incorporate all these into one illustration.

Initially I had used sketches of cars and drew up a small sketch of Ned yelling at the pigeons to get away from his car (that was covered in bird poo), and I drew up a bigger erosion to just push some more expressions and body a gauge and make a better composed illustration-- when I came to do the final illustration, I decided to it's better suited for it to be linked to his story and have a scarecrow with birds surrounding his crops/plants. I used a sketch I did from. ComicCon where this guy was wearing a large coat and hat as a reference, and I used what I learnt from sketching my garden (with the shovel).

I used watercolour and coloured pencils to create this illustration and I used ink pen for the outline of the illustration.

The illustration is a fun little narrative, and I really enjoyed incorporating my character that I made a while back into an illustration-- bringing him to life. The colours are good, they're cohesive and I feel my pracitccce in studying tones and values have paid off. However, I feel like the background it way distracting, there are too many textures and coours that are throwing off the illlustration The composition is a little weak since you look at the scarecrow first before seeing Ned, which sort of ruins the narrative since you're meant to see this grumpy man tellling birds to go away.

Illustration Three

For this illustration, I wanted to just have fun and explore some of the real-life sketches that I did, incorporating them together for an amusing little joke. The sketches below you may have seen in the previous illustrations, but I felt like I wanted to use what I observed from life and create something out of my comfort zone. I went further with two of the sketches, developing them into mini-illustrations; but that inspiration made me want to further into an artwork.

Above is the mini-illustrations that I did in my sketchbooks, from these sketches I went into Procreate and I want to challenge myself by creating a crowded scene, merging all these sketches to create a comic panel. I took inspiration from the Spiderverse movies of the quote "I think it's a Banksy", I wanted to use the funny pigeon again so I played around with that.

This illustration is my least favourite, as I was creating I was stuck with colouring and texturing-- I'm not sure if it's because the illustration is weak in terms of composition, style, and topic. The shadows are all wrong and I just dislike the overall illustration; I really want to redo it all.

Reworking the illustrations

I wanted to rework the illustrations so I can push my work further, so for the first illustration I simply just wanted to improve the expression of the character, therefore I went back into the document and made small marks and included some eyebrows that were narrowed and made his open mouth more prominent by darken it and adding white mark for the teeth-- sine he's talking...

I feel like this really does improve the narrative by the marks, he looks stern and improve so the narrative of this illustration.

For this illustration I wanted to make the composition look better and I wanted to improve the background to make it less distracting, therefore I completely removed the background and added a soft blue fade on it instead- I also darkened the fences in the back just to make the scarecrow and Ned stand out more; I did a little touch up on the crops/flowers at the bottom, making it more vibrant.

I added a blu to the edges of the illustration as well, since I imagine it as it could be in a children's book (like Beatrix Potter's illustrations in her novella's). Lastly, I addded a little exclaimation mark to the illustration to express his agrivation towards the birds.

Illustration Three

I wanted to redo most of the illustration, but I wanted to try and make it into a comic panel-- and I wanted to use what I had already come up with; I stuck to a vibrant colour scheme and used halftone effects.

This redo of illustration improved it sooo much, I stuck with comic panel feel and used the halftone effect which is very effective; the illustration feels less cluttered and is a lot more punchier. The composition (even though it hasn't changed in terms of new line-work and shapes),I tried really had o use colour to improve the composition, using the same colour for the topic of illustration and a darker (blue) for the crowded character.

Exactly what I wanted, something fun and inspired by the Spiderverse movies-- I really love this illustration.

Rework from Feedback

Image One

Adding expression

Image Two

Playing with cropping/composition

Final Image

Image Three

Changing colour theme

Evaluation

The aim of this exercise was to reflect on my previous sketches in my sketchbook and create several illustrations from a variety of different elements in my sketchbook, the end result should be an illustration with an intended narrative.

This exercise has been extremely fun to do, I love to play with narrative so as I flicked through my sketchbook I had too many things in my head; I filtered it down to my personal favourites and then filter it down more to what I think could be a narrative-- and I wanted to do several illustrations on the similar sketches to explore my creativity.

When it came to making the illustrations, I used a variety of mediums such as, traditional: watercolour, coloured pencils, inks-- and then using digital for two other illustrations; the style unintentional ended up like being a comic (for two) and one looking like a children's illustration.

Going back and redoing the illustrations have resulted in a stronger outcome, they have stronger compositions, better narratives and they read better. This exercise has really made me grow, I wanted to do some more abstract-ness-- rather than realistic colours, I wanted to have texture and some beautiful washes of colour.

Working on feedback given by students and my tutor, I changed up a few issues with the illustrations, such as an expression, composition and colour.

For the colour I referred to my tutor feedback of sticking with green and pink colour scheme, which I agree with, seeing the colour scheme it works much better with establishing importance of the illustration (the two characters at the front and the bird in a back being priority and the dark green characters having less importance- reducing the values so bring the values around them up.

The expression adds the cherry to the cake, it improves the character and narrative so much; it also allows for some clarity in the piece too.

With the composition I found was a little more difficult since there was so many elements to play around with- and asking friends they said that the final outcome had the better composition.

Going back over this after a long while of seeing this has helped me go back over some of the fundamental skills that I felt like I needed refreshing on; and is preparing me for other projects to come.