Choosing Content

'The Daffodil Affair' extract.

Questions:
If this were to be made into a film, what would the main character be like?
Middle aged, mindlessly going to work each day. The work had left him numb as his anger had been buried deeper and deeper into his soul and now he felt nothing.

What clothes would the character be wearing?
A plain suit, black with a dark coloured tie and white crisp shirt, black shiny shoes.

What furniture is in the main area in which the action takes place?
Only a desk. It is a very empty, uninspired, lifeless room.


Collect visual reference for the items in your list




Textural and Colouristic visual brainstorming and idea generation

Choose a word which you feel captures the mood you would like to convey: Dark

Moodboard

Sketches:

Thumbnail ideas

Rough sketch which I scanned and edited in Photoshop.

Final Illustration:

I wanted a stark, bold illustration using some texture from my mood board. I picked out the colour from the mottled background to create a lighter solid colour to illustrate the burst of light from the windows. I wanted the illustration to have a somber, dark feel to it, a bit of mystery to the detective character. I tilted his head to suggest he was thinking whilst he smoked.

I'm really pleased with how the illustration came out, I feel it says what I wanted it to and I enjoyed working digitally, which is very different from what I'm used to.

Spider Diagrams

Seaside:

Childhood:

Angry:

Festival:

Response:

I found seaside the easiest since it's one of my favourite places to go. I also used image reference to help me expand. I found 'Angry' to be the hardest since it's something that makes me very uncomfortable and I like to avoid it as much as possible. It was uncomfortable to see all the words on there. Festival was also tricky since there are different kinds of festivals and it's not something I go to much, so struggled a bit with that as well.

Visual Metaphors

Examples

Magazine articles and adverts

An advert and artworks by Happy D Artist and Banksy

More ads

Metaphor chosen: 'Dreams of Romance'







List of Visual Objects:

Spider Diagram:

 

Show someone else:

I showed my doodles to my Husband. He got the dream part right away but felt like my doodles represented love. He suggested I add a candle lit dinner to suggest romance, so I added that.

Using Reference

Research:
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/nikijacksonart/1950s-research/





Review:

The 1950's was very colourful. Bright cheerful colours were used, especially blues, reds and pinks. These colours were popular decor for the Amercian diners as well as the home. Music was a big part of the 50's with families listening to their favoruites on vinyl records at home and on juke boxes when out socialising with friends. Bold designs were also used and the typical kitchen of a 1950's home was quite colourful and light.  Black and white check floors were popular too.
Posters had bold, graphic text and images to advertise the latest foods, movies etc Classic cars were also colorful, pink, red, blue or green.
Hair and make up were a big thing, with winged eyeliner and backcombed hair to carry the latest style.
The 1950's were definitely all about colour and style, in every way.



I think a lot of the 50's colour and style still has a presence today. Bright coloured cars (Fiat 500) are now coming back into society, old graphic design is being reproduced on tins and decor for the home to re-live the ideal of that era. Brands like Orla Keily and Cath Kidston are making home decor items and clothing that reflect a 50's feel and that nostalgic feeling. Pop art was big in the 50's and I think it will always have it's place since it is bold and colourful and doesn't seem to age.

Ideas:

Illustration:

Here is my final illustration. I used waterbased markers and a fineliner to complete this illustration. I choose to go with a music theme, bold patterns and poofy dress. The chair is retro and the table with the record player. Overall it has the look I was going for but I would have liked to improve the quality of this illustration. Had I allowed more time I would have experimented with the figure more and just improved the overall look.

Inspiration:

                                                         

                               

I took a lot of inspiration from the above illustrations. I wanted something simple and quirky that would appeal to a teenager and that would reflect the colours of the era and the bold patterns. When researching 1950's illustrations I found a lot of black and white illustrations in 'The Dictionary of 20th Century British Book Illustrators' and so that is another reason I chose this style.

Mark Making

Art supplies used: Crayons, charcoal, graphite, pental brush pen, paint, chalk pastel, oil pastel, ink, biro, coloured pencil, graphite block.

Making a Moodboard

Writing a Brief

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/415105290638146173/

'Enjoying Spring'

Fran Meneses

aka 'Frannerd'.

The Brief:

Create a simple cartoon-style, quirky line drawing using ink pen and watercolours depicting a female character. The colours are to be subtle and the theme is to express a young adult girl who loves the season 'Spring'. The mood of the illustration should be light and fresh.

She loves flowers, which she often picks to put in her hair. She expresses herself in what she wears and loves the colours pink and blue. Her favourite drink is coffee and she loves to sketch whilst listening to music on her mobile phone.

The target audience are young female creative adults.

The finished illustration will be used on the front covers of A5 notebooks for a well known stationery company.

Assignment Five

I began this assignment by brainstorming the words 'Seven Days', coming up with what type of illustration I could do.

I really liked the idea of the bookshop as the client and the illustration for a promotion they were running.

I then brainstormed age groups and why they would be interested.

Through this brainstorming I came up with my brief.

Client Brief:

Waterstone's, a major book retailer are running a promotion to encourage teenagers to read more physical books. They want to appeal to the teenage interest of gaming as a theme. The promotion is a 7 day reading challenge, where teenagers can sign up by going into any Waterstone's branch, purchasing their first book, which they will receive a discount for and a free tote bag to carry the books and promote the event

The age range is high school aged 11 to 16 years. They can choose to read any book and the challenge is to read as many pages as possible in seven days. This could be of one book or several. 

For each page they read they get 1 point, and will continue to collect points the more they read. At the end of the challenge, the person who has read the most pages/collected the most points will receive a prize.

Waterstone's would like you to create an illustration for the free tote bags, sized 3000 x 2400 pixels, 300 dpi, using a gaming theme and promoting the seven day challenge. The design is to be suitable for both girls and boys and be eye catching from a distance.

Research:

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/nikijacksonart/seven-days/

Designing a font:

I wanted the font to be quite simple so it could be read from a distance clearly but still on the gaming theme as the client requested. These are my ideas:

I then took this into Procreate to develop further. For the Waterstone's logo I wanted to do a 'take over' where I changed the existing logo font and used the gaming style font so that it would all fit together on the tote bag design.

For the books I wanted to create a simple icon that could look similar to a Pac Man style game showing the books with the title. I first thought about how I would draw the books, open or closed, what angle etc and decided to go for an open book design to fit the challenge of pages read.
I decided to go for neon colours to make the design stand out and fit with the gaming theme.

Client Line Visual:

Mock Up:

Final Designs:

Overall I am pretty pleased with how my final illustration came out, it was fun to come up with the ideas and I think with more practice I could improve on this even more.

Assignment Four

I began this assignment by brainstorming for the two words that appealed to me most, Lost and Discovery. I really wasn't sure how to approach this brief, it took a lot of thought of different ideas and looking up lot's of news articles for ideas.

These are some examples of the articles I found.

I found myself quite interested in the discovery of health benefits and as a lover of green tea and knowing it has been in the news before, I decided to go with that. 

Headline: 'The Secret Health Benefits of Green Tea'

To set up the still life I went to my favourite cafe and arranged my green tea pot, cup and brewing timer in several different compositions. I took lots of photos and then sketched out several thumbnails for ideas.

Here are a few of the photos:

Thumbnail Sketches:

I liked several of the compositions but decided to go with this one and did the objective drawing of the still life set up.

For the tonal sketch I decided to take away the lines and found that really helpful for my ideas for the final illustration.

I decided to go for a simplified line drawing of the still life elements and use a green colour palette to signify the health benefits and the colour of the tea. I felt the white outlines helped with an overall fresh feel.

Line visual:

Final Illustration:

I'm really pleased with how this illustration turned out and feel it would work very well for a health magazine article.