Research Task: Creating your own version of reality

For this research task, I was to look at other artist's sketchbook and see how they approach their day-to-day drawings as well as their techniques. I searched online at the different sketchbooks from different artists and picked out the ones that stood out to me, as well as the ones that I would like to implement elements in my day-to-day sketching/painting.

First up is ...

Marianne Vander Dussen

Marianne Vander Dussen loves to use journaling and daily sketching/painting as one, and loves to cover the whole page spread with the subject; her subject varies, however, she mainly uses landscapes as her inspiration.

Dussen uses a variety of mediums in her work, from gouache, acrylic, inks and metallic paint; and the technique she uses them in is very broad too! She initially starts of with a pencil sketch, then writes her thoughts/day onto the page before washing the entire page spread in washed-inks, from there it's painting her subjects, inking the writing and adding metallic paint for the finishing touches.

Marianne likes to take her time with each page, seeing the sketchbook as a diary to be taken with great care in her creations. She creates her works in realism, however loves to great some abstract backgrounds for some pages. She's sometimes seen creating landscape painting in her sketchbook, creating beautiful studies that show where she's been or what she's inspired by.

What I would like to take away from watching the process and some of the sketchbook of Marianne Vander Dussen, is her explorative painting studies and also how she does journaling in her sketchbook- writing it along the page; I feel like it would really open me up to documenting my day/feelings and to improve my painting skills.

1

Chroma Moma

I've seen a few videos of Chroma Moma and I love the way that they draw and sketch, they draw everything from cars, planes-- anything mechanical as well as storyboards and people studies.

Chroma Moma uses ink pens to create their sketches and the sketching is precise and detailed, Chroma studies every detail of the subject and you can see their drawings improve much more after each study.

The style is very graphic novel-espue, almost anime style, because Chroma Moma pushes and pulls with how much line-work they use, sometimes giving an illusion of the material/shape of an object with smaller mark-making.

The technique that Chroma Moma uses is line hatching and laying the pen over to create a stronger, darker line to create values in their studies, by line hatching/scratching, they are able to create a much more puncher illustration study and it really makes the illustration come together-- as well as study the values of light on the object.

What I want to take away from Chroma Moma into my future sketchbook exploration is the incredible detail and the way they create a beautiful sense of depth, also the way they study from storyboarding and car mechanics.

2

Heinrich Kley

Heinrich Kley meticulously drew in ink (like Chroma Roma) and did it in such a beautiful detailed way, distinguished values with the amount of pen strokes they use; they create lots of textures from the line-work of the ink. The subjects of drawings are always adventurous and fun, the characters vary from humans to anthropomorphic beings to more mythical creatures.

The illustrations always look finished, and they look very tonal with the tonal technique of line-work, the illustrations are very stylised with the way it's drawn, how each line has a purpose and the way that each line has a reason to be there. Similar to Chroma Moma, although there is a lot more texture and line-work in the values.

The style is very old-fashioned, and in the video below they say that this style inspired Disney in their style-- it remind me of what you'd see in novels for books and fun, mythical style; it's illustrative, but realistic in how the fictional subjects feel real.

The drawings are well-observed and look like they had taken a very long time to complete, the full illustrations are bold against the plain white page, it creates a huge contrast of space.

I like his exploration of mythical creatures and the anthropomorphic beings with the dynamic use of lines and tones in his work, the beautiful illustrations that look so proportionate that they could have been studied from life (except they're not real).

3

Karl Kopinski

Karl Kopinski is well-known for his textures illustrations, and in his sketchbook there is a wide-variety of sketches ranging from simple pencil sketches to full-fledge illustrations.

Kopinski does this in ink pen, copic markers and pencils, they're mainly tonal black and white illustration/sketches; and the subjects are characters that he's made up or if he's inspired by something.

The character designs are scratchy, fluid and have lots of line-work; drawing from imagination takes a few extra lines which he then goes over darker in tone. The line-work and textures add to the characters to give them texture to the face to make them old or weathered, or to the clothes to give the character life.

What I like about Karl Kopinski is the semi-realism with the textures of the skin/clothes, and the imagination to create these characters in his sketchbooks; it's something that I would love to do more of is texturing in my work and having more fun creating characters.

4

Olga Andriyenko

Olga Andriyenko is not afraid to tell a story in her sketchbooks, and isn't afraid to experiment. She's known to create comic/graphic novels and in her sketchbooks she creates scenes or illustrations that tell a story-- she is always inspired by the colour red, with most characters having bright red hair.

Andriyenko's mediums are traditional at times, with using inks and pencil-- and sometimes exploring the digital mediums. She uses red pencil to sketch, quickly capturing the idea before using an ink brush pen to complete the illustration. For colour she uses watercolour, keeping it bright and using the white paper for the light values.

The drawings are very stylised, very-rounded characters and very bright imagery; there are very fun characters with bold colour choices; the design choices for the story elements of her sketchbook are imaginative and fun with bold red colours and exaggerated imagery (expressions, body language).

What I want to take away from this artist, is the ability to create a story in an sketchbook illustrations, so that in the future I could get ideas for art/story/illustrations.

5

What to take away from the research...

Taking away from this research task is to experiment even more, play with colour, be bold with sketches, drawings-- have fun with designing characters and I especially want to try and painting studies, like Marianne Vander Dussen. Creating painting studies of the masters, learning colour theory in depth, and studying painting from life.

I would also like to study objects more in depth, like the mechanical studies since I feel like that could help me improve my drawings making them have depth-- I don't like my sketches being flat at the moment, I really want to push myself; this research task was really good for me to get inspired again.

1 Marianne Vander Dussen, Youtube 'Using Sketchbooks to Reconnect with Nature || Art and Imperfection', May 1, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXJKLJXtVPo Accessed June 9, 2023

2 Chroma Moma, Youtube 'Sketchbook Tour - The Training Arc Sketchbook', Mar 30,2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzJg_d4dlRo&t=1258s Accessed June 9, 2023.

3 Proko, Youtube 'The Man Who Inspired Disney - Heinrich Kley ORIGINAL Sketchbook Tour', Dec 8, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjlUdU7CsuE&t=1182s Accessed June 9, 2023.

4 Trojan Horse Was a Unicorn, Youtube 'The Sketchbook Series - Karl Kopinski', Feb 28, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_bBwtn_SnI&t=874s Accessed June 9, 2023.

5 Trojan Horse Was a Unicorn, Youtube 'The Sketchbook Series - Olga Andriyenko', May 20, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPUdvdi3-0I&list=PLSyQ0NEnXiTQnuAKfU73WGPqAU8QxVd4K&index=7 Accessed June 9, 2023.