Evaluation

This module has helped me to direct my practice and focus on my weak points. Throughout this year I have realised that I want to produce figure based narratives especially graphic novels or comic books. Over the summer I will improve my figure drawing and work on expression on gestures because this will feed directly into my future work and help with my Final Major and research projects. Observational drawing will still be important as these skills always need improving I will make sure I have a good resource of observed drawings instead of just using my imagination, in this way my work will be more believable and accurate. Some of the exercises like the ones that encourage caricature and multiple image compositions have been useful to me and will give me more ideas for future comic book work.

Reportage sketchbook

Since Antwerp I have been keeping a small sketchbook to record drawings when I am out and about. I am not normally a fan of sketchbooks preferring to use sheets as and when I need them. But this is a small sketchbook and I hope to improve my figure drawing skills using real life people and their poses and quick reportage drawings.




Whilst using this book I have improved my skills in drawing buildings, although I can still improve my perspective I am happy with the way I can capture the form and tone on the building better now. I also am more able to capture peoples poses in a few lines which is useful as people move around a lot and you must draw quickly in these situations.
I will maintain this sketchbook and improve with practise, I will have more time over summer to collect a good base of reference for people and a range of locations.

Interior Drawings -light and dark

I tried to capture and exaggerate the difference in lighting in these scenes around my house to communicate the sense of a journey different atmospheres and emotions. After my initial drawings to capture the difference in light I reproduced them in different techniques to express the changes.


I used varying line thickness to capture thee sense of light changes breaking up the line to let the light through and emphasising tone with washes. I think this is quite an effective method and the difference in line adds interest.



For the darkest scene I used black ink with my brush pen and strong lines. I like the contrast with no tonal shading, it exaggerate the scene and adds a sense of foreboding with the darkness.

Portrait drawing

To practice portrait drawing I drew Jaime and she drew me. We did this in 10 minute blocks of looking and drawing so we each had equal chance.

First drawing

My favourite was the first drawing that I did because I feel like I caught some of her personality in the expression and it resembles her most closely. I also like the conte drawing especially the shading around the cheekbone.

mythical beast version

Emphasised shadows

Dragon facial expressions

 Based on the direct observations we experimented with other ways of drawing the person which still expressed something about them, like caricature. I trued variations of lighting on the face to express mystery then experimented with more abstract creature versions. I like the mythical creatures pose and just added features such as the hair style to directly link it to Jaime's appearance instead of just her personality.

I later extended this practice doing a portrait drawing of Jake and then trying a more caricatured style like a comic book character. This was meant to express his personality and hint at what his place would be in a story as I am always thinking about comic book characters and potential storylines.







I used coloured pencil in my drawing as I liked the coloured effect of the conte in previous drawings. It also allows me to sketch out poses and shade before adding detail with pen.


I think this is a good way of creating characters and getting a sense of what shows someones personality so I will do more drawings where I exaggerate aspects of a person when doing character research in the future.

City drawings

I didn't go on the London trip because I had to work but have been home to Manchester in between and managed to do some drawings then. I focused on buildings mainly those around Manchester Metropolitan University as I think I will be using the University as a setting for a comic project possibly even my FMP.

The Grosvenor building, All Saints Campus MMU

More views around All Saints Campus




I still need to get a better eye for perspective whilst practising but I am developing a more consistent style that I am comfortable with when drawing buildings.

Monocular

We went out to Imperial Gardens and did some drawings through a small paper tube so that we would be restricted to one viewpoint. This helped me to consider compositions and focus on particular areas instead of trying to draw and entire scene.



I focused on figures and there were children playing around us. They were interesting to draw but did not stay still for very long! I gathered information of the surroundings as somewhere to set the activities of the children.

Thumbnail layout

final composition

I then compiled elements of these drawing into a singular multi viewpoint image. I used the tree as the central image to link the children together and have them climbing and being around it. I like multiple image compositions and will try to do more of them in the future.

Object in viewpoints

Another small task was to draw an object we could see outside from multiple viewpoints. I decided to make this more interesting and draw a large object, the bridge linking the buildings near the library.

 

It was very difficult to draw from underneath and to keep in perspective but hopefully will give me some ideas when creating settings buildings and environments.