Illustrative people and places
Here is a flick through of my Assignment 3 sketchbook from start to finish. Below is my process, recorded as I went, split into visual research and developing a narrative.
1: Visual research
I decided to go somewhere fresh, rather than return to my route. The Winter Garden in Sheffield has always captured my attention due to the unique curved building and the beautiful plants inside. There is also an interesting combination of materials – plus, it leads into the Millennium Art Gallery, and is very close to some theatres, so the area itself feels creative. It is an intriguing space and so I decided to take my sketchbook there.
I started on the outside of the building, sitting in the courtyard with tall buildings surrounding me, looking at The Winter Garden. It stands out against grey, with its wooden frame and greenery bursting from within. This already gave me ideas about how to capture this – potentially a grid system with leaves and flowers escaping, a contrast of materials with grey or black for the building (strong shapes) versus bright colours, possibly crayon or paint to capture the wild, unpredictable shapes of the plant-life.
I ventured inside for most of my sketches, moving from bench to bench, drawing the people and the interior. The Garden is a passing place, as well as a meeting place for people, and an area to stop for lunch or a snack or just a sit down. It has an interesting atmosphere – there is a hum of energy and movement, but it is relatively peaceful.
I thoroughly enjoyed my day in The Garden and felt like I gathered lots of information in my sketchbook and was inspired by the space (this was not always the feeling during some of these tasks, so I was pleased!) I came away with lots of ideas.
Which drawings do you see as pieces of notation?
I tended to look closely at certain aspects of the location and capture little details – these drawings acted as notation, to inform me about the space and its contents or structure. For example, I did a few drawings of the arched shape of the building (difficult to achieve!) and some close-ups of plants and flowers. Lots of the pages contain written notation too, when ideas came to me to potentially try later or to record adjectives or descriptions to help me recall the mood or atmosphere.
Which drawings do you see as possible pieces of reportage as they already exist?
I felt like some of my drawings captured the balance of smooth, sleek, curved building and orderly paths and geometric glass shapes, with the unpredictable, wild natural shapes of the plants. Even though they were quick drawings, they seemed to achieve the goal of portraying my chosen location.
I noticed that I tended to focus on people OR the location, so I made sure I tried to look at both further on in my sketches. This made such a difference – the combination of the two helped add context to the scene.
Which drawings would you like to build upon further in your studio?
There are many images in this sketchbook that I would like to experiment with; the idea of combining and layering drawings of people, plants and the building was on my mind during the whole process of collecting information. Lots of the drawings could be employed here, perhaps to develop scenes, like the ones below:
I felt like this final page captured a couple of key ideas I would like to take further.
I definitely want to try splitting up an image to create the structure of the building using negative space for the grid/beams, with the colourful image of plants being used as “glass panels” – the viewer would be looking from the outside in. I might also try this as if the panels are being used inside too.
The drawing on the right shows the idea of layering exterior, building structure, plants and people. I thought about trying this physically, using tracing paper or clingfilm or plastic wallets.
2: Developing a narrative
I had already been noting down words as I went, so I consolidated this back in my work space and decided on my focus. Mainly, I wanted to capture the balance of nature and man-made structure, along with people travelling through. The location was peaceful, hushed and stunningly beautiful – I wanted this mood to come across in the image, but also capture the people who only walk through, without really stopping.
First, I wanted to try some of the ideas I came up with while I was in The Winter Garden. I still varied my materials, so as to see which captured the colour and texture I had experienced – these included watercolours, pencil crayons, permanent markers, acrylics, as well as a variety of surfaces. Additionally, I attempted a few different techniques to try to portray the mood of The Garden. Some of my favourites from these pages included the use of negative space to create the grid effect of the windows (a wonderful way to portray wild nature and orderly man-made structure) and the watercolour and pencil crayon mixture, which brought out beautiful details in the plants and exaggerated the natural shapes and curves. Something that I thought would be fun to try was layering – I did this using permanent markers or acrylics on plastic wallets and mixing and matching the layers. It was a valuable process in terms of achieving a desirable composition, but the colours and textures did not work. Sometimes the detail got lost in the layers.
Next, I looked back over all of my drawings and did some thumbnail images, combining my favourites. I found that, from the SCAMPER strategies, ‘combine’ was my most used technique (possibly next to ‘modify’ as I redrew and refined images a lot). During my visual research, I had collected lots of ‘parts’ or snapshots – to develop a narrative, I brought together these elements to create a more complete picture of the location and activity.
It was at this point that I settled on the idea of a poster; this was my focus (‘putting my image to another use’ and ‘adapting’ to this purpose). I felt it was important to look at some examples. I had remembered travelling to Pembrokeshire some years ago and seeing travel images containing a location and people ‘doing’ something there; I recalled bright, bold colours and punchy headings. Luckily, I managed to find these again, which inspired my choice of wording. To keep it simple but effective, I chose the command ‘Pause.’ It seemed appropriate; even if people were passing through The Garden, they would stop to look around them, to notice their surroundings. It was a break from the city, even if only momentarily. I had noticed command words on other posters, I suppose to encourage people to actively engage with the location somehow (like ‘stay and play’). Travel posters often promote the location and the activity to do there, even if it is basic, like ‘stay and play’.
Throughout all this, I noted which SCAMPER processes I was using most often and which were the most important (see pages below).
After this, I began to create more refined mock ups. I created another version of the watercolour and pencil crayon image (which was a version of a view I’d captured quickly in biro and crayon in The Garden), focusing on vivid colours and a tropical, warm, inviting mood (peaceful and hushed; nature).
I made a copy of this to try the negative space grid again, more carefully, as I thought this had worked well to show the balance of colourful, unpredictable nature and structured, man-made buildings. The geometric shapes being ‘tamed’ was an intriguing look. The copying process made some of the colours more saturated, which was not unwelcome. It began to remind me of a large window.
Then, I began experimenting with adding people to the scene (I drew several from my initial sketches again, adding a little more detail, using biro. I then photocopied these to cut out and place in each scene). This was where layering came into play – I tried lots of variations to see which worked best. I had imagined having one figure standing still in front of The Garden, taking in the view, while everyone else was on the move.
As I recorded in my sketchbook, I was really happy with the negative space grid, so I took this further. I also was quite pleased with the more abstract structure extending from the centre of plants, cutting across the frame. The pause button shape had not worked as well as I had imagined, but I decided to see what it would look like with text regardless.
Below are the initial mock ups I created. Above, the sketchbook pages show some notes I made after I’d created them. The negative space grid seemed the most sound composition, with people walking towards it and the middle figure facing it straight on. It also appeared as if it were a colourful stained glass window, which I thought looked quite intriguing. This was definitely my favourite.
I had made a New Year goal to seek out more feedback on my work, as it is something I have struggled with previously. I sent these mock ups to the Discord sketchbook group for OCA and to some of my friends and family. In general, people liked the gridded structure best, with some liking the wooden beams image best, as the shapes and curves were more interesting and drew the eye into the image.
I had some comments that the grey text was better, as this ensured the focus was on the location, then the people, and the text was not too distracting. I kept this in mind when reworking the image.
Lots of people liked the composition of these gridded mock ups, but one person made the comment that the colours seemed less vivid than the other mock ups. I totally agreed, and so returned to these to edit the colours.
First, I played with the screenshots on my phone, which were poor quality, but I could still get an idea of colour using contrast, brightness and saturation.
I then returned to the mock ups on my laptop and created these two:
As the tone of the people changed more from black to blue, I altered the text and thought the empty fill in ‘pause’ helped it fit with the image more coherently. Two people commented that the second text worked better with the image. It is more rounded and heavier weight, and with the spaces inside the letters and between the letters, it seems more open and relaxed. This colour change also lets the plant window be the focus, then the people (hints of colour can be seen in these drawings due to changing the saturation).
I feel like this assignment helped me make some genuine breakthroughs in my personal practice. The location I chose inspired me and I felt thoroughly motivated throughout. The fact that I sought out feedback from so many people was important to me, to help me improve my work and act on constructive criticism from others. It was an enjoyable task and I am thrilled with the experimentation processes I went through.
Jade's OCA Learning Log 