Visual exploration 1 - Illustration (L4)

In the final two weeks of the module of visual exploration, we were tasked with the brief "Popping out" which was a eight panel story board of a selected character from the local folk brief popping out to blank. In this brief, we were challenged to take all the experimentation in mark making, printing and composition throughout the module and create eight distinct panels employing the same medium/style.  As shown below, for my brief I decided to use this character from the local folk brief as they stood out among the other characters due to they're positivity. From these sketches and notes I had made during the local folk brief, I began to enhance this character further with a variety of different concepts and started to develop my ideas for they're story. In the end I chose the title "Sol popped out to the bookshop" as I saw them near a book shop and I chose the name Sol as it means sun in a number of different languages.  From these concept notes, I began ...

In the seventh week into the module of visual exploration, we were tasked with the brief "Local folk" in which we collated five different observational informational sketches of people within our local area. These sketches were divided into four sections; a observational sketch of the subject, description of the environment, description of impressions and dialogue of the subject and a sketch of the environment surrounding the subject. My local for this brief was Hanley city centre.  1st sketch: Cheerful man outside of a bookshop 2nd sketch: Cold woman inspecting plant sale 3rd sketch: Woman chatting with friend while walking 4th sketch: Man struggling to carry fridge over shoulder 5th sketch: Old man looking through a bakery window

In the sixth week into the module of visual exploration, we were set the brief "On and off" which were two compositions visualizing our interpretation of on and off. Within this task, we were encouraged to be imaginative and experiment with a wide range of mark making and techniques to enhance the visual language of the pieces. Firstly, when beginning this brief I started by brainstorming my ideas for these two pieces. For instance, some of these concepts that I decided not to pursue included hibernation, cooking, music/performance or vampires. For each of these concepts, I created draft thumbnails to develop my concept for the framing, techniques and aspects of the compositions with written notes and sketches.  In conclusion, I decided to continue from the thumbnail my idea of "King of the castle" as my interpretation for on and off. This concept involved a goat being king of the castle on physically on the castle for the side of "On". Then, for my off pi...

In the fifth week into the module of visual exploration, we began our exploration of the composition brief in which we were given three randomly selected word and tasked to create a number of different thumbnail illustrations. Throughout these thumbnail illustrations I aimed to keep the illustrative language simplistic, utilize mark making techniques (as previously employed through our alphabet of marks) and expand my imaginative conception of ideas.  My three randomly selected words were athlete, eagle and book. To begin with, I started creating rough thumbnail illustrations (as shown below) and experimented with different aspects of the compositions such as framing, perspective, narrative and mark making.  For instance, to communicate the visual language of a thumbnails narrative scene such as the eagle dropping a book on the runner's head (1st image, bottom right) I lengthened the framing of the composition and added expressive mark making to enhance the movement and charac...

In this week into the module of visual exploration, we were tasked with the brief "This is not a tree"; an exploration of any chosen species of tree through multiple mediums, ideas and experimentation. For my choice of tree I chose a rowan tree as it has significantly interesting visual features, cultural history and has unique biological aspects.  Firstly, to begin this brief I researched and created notes on the rowan tree that would be relevant to the collation and experimentation within this project. For instance, this included factors such as history, biology and visual references (as shown below). After this I began to brainstorm ideas and concepts for how I could visually communicate this theme of the rowan tree through differing mediums, techniques and visual language presentation (as shown on 2nd below). For example, during this projects I utilized different mediums such as acrylic paint, colour pencils, ballpoint pen, watercolour paints, oil pastels, charcoal and re...