Here I am, starting 2021 with a brand new Level and a brand new Illustration course. I learned a wealth of valuable information from the Level 1 courses (a.i. Illustration 1: Key steps to Illustration, Illustration Sketchbooks, and Book Design 1: Creative Book Design) and perhaps even more importantly, I have begun to tentatively set the foundations for an effective process. Looking back at Level 1, I can see a clear improvement across the courses, thanks to my wonderful tutors at the Open College of the Arts. My artistic skills have grown, yes, but I think the more significant was my improved thinking when it comes to evaluating and re-evaluating ones work during a project and striving to make it better, more interesting, and more fitting for the brief. I have to add that this improvement came (and is still coming) very slowly. But now that I am at the threshold of Level 2, I think I at least have an understanding as to what that process looks like.

I am hoping that this year and in this new course I will begin to build on what I have started in Level 1. Before I had very little idea of how I should even approach these courses, but now that I do I would like to strive for more excellent end results. Blogging was also a bit of a struggle at first, but now I believe I have gotten a better hang of it, though I would like to take better photographs of my work than I have previously. And lastly, in the latter half of 2020 I took more interest in art history (illustration especially) and I would like to continue this with a more intentional attitude. Especially since I will have a critical review to write during this course. It is my hope that overall at the end of this course I will have an even better understanding of the practical skills required to a brief with excellence.

Our very first task: find some illustrators. There are so many contemporary illustrators to choose from, but I have selected six whose work I personally admire and have more or less kept an eye out for recently. Three of these (Jake Parker, Lee White and Will Terry) are also art educators whose content I greatly appreciate and love to learn from.

1. Jamie Jones

Jamie Jones is an illustrator and concept artist who has worked for companies like Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and Disney. His work is cinematic yet holds a painterly, illustrative look which I love. Although his work is digital, it hearkens back to 20th century illustrations in its texture and design. This makes his work stand out from other concept art that I have seen, as it lends a more real feeling to the images.

2. Serena Malyon

I love Malyon’s whimsical style, her work is predominantly traditional, in gouache and acrylics and it is filled with castles, princesses and magic. Her illustrations are rich with color and detail and her style draws from certain aspects of medieval illuminations and classic children’s book illustrations.

3. Jake Parker

Jake parker is an incredibly versatile artist who has worked in children’s book publishing, film, and comic books. He is also famous for starting the Inktober challenge. What I personally love about his work is the way all of his work tells a story. He can even make a single character tell a story. Even if it completely lack environment or other characters to interact with, that character has something to say either through expression or design.

4. Celia Lowenthal

Lowenthal’s work is vibrant and colorful, combining drawing and digital painting techniques to wonderful effect. She is a illustrator and comic book artist. Among others, she has illustrated for Over the Garden Wall and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. I admire the boldness of color and texture and the way the images retain their dynamism and storytelling amidst the beautiful clutter.

5. Will Terry

Will Terry’s work is they type of imagery I think of when it comes to contemporary children’s illustration. The characters are cute, rounded and always expressive, the colors are vibrant and glowing, and there is a Disney-esque nostalgia to them. His artwork is digital, but looks like many layers of colored pencil.

5. Lee White

Lee White’s illustration style is what I would call a little more artsy in comparison with the rest. He has illustrated books, but his work is more the type you frame and put on greeting cards. His illustrations are of charming concepts and atmosphere. He works digitally, with oils and with watercolors, and mixes mediums as well.

Personal voice or style is not something I have been actively working to develop, though inevitably my artwork does tend to steer towards a certain look because of the mediums that I use and artwork I like and try to imitate.

The medium I find myself most at home with is ink and dip pen or with ink and brush. My art teacher introduced me to ink when I was younger and I have loved it ever since. I love the simplicity of black and white and the textures that can be created with dot and line. Inspiration for inking can range from Durer’s etchings to Asian landscape art, to comic book pages.
When it comes to color, my best work so far has been digital, but I started out with watercolors and recently I have been trying to use more gouache. This is a medium I want to become better at in the next period. I am sure that if I become better at painting with gouache traditionally, my digital painting will also increase in quality.

Subject-wise, I will always think that something is more fun to draw if it’s fantastical. I love drawing form life, I even like capturing the everyday, but it doesn’t hold the same enjoyment that drawing something with a fantastical twist does. If I had to draw a regular scene like two little girls at a piano I could and I would find it very enjoyable, but at the same time I would be thinking: “But what if there was a cute little gnome singing with them from atop a cushion? Wouldn’t that be more fun?” But even if something that I make doesn’t have magic in it, I at least want it to tell a story or express an emotion.

My most recent piece, “Beauty and the Beast” inspired by Walter Crane’s illustrations.

In the future, I think I would like to become better with both the digital and traditional mediums that I enjoy using, but the more important thing I would like to develop is a better design sensibility. I feel like my work would benefit from being better composed and from being built with more dynamic and expressive shapes. Though I am not exactly sure how to do that.

The place I tend to go for inspiration, and where I collect images is Pinterest. I like the abundance of options when it comes to artwork and I like the easy organization and viewing it affords. I do not think I will be collecting a physical visual diary (in terms of photography) because I am not much of a scrapbooking person and because I find digital resources more portable and more economic when it comes to space and paper.

My most frequented boards are the ones that I have called Painterly Illustration, Ink, and my oldest Drawing board which I have had for years and has since lost all organization or theme. I also have boards on Typography, Book Covers and Altered Books. These are boards that I consider permanent, but I do tend to also create a board for whatever new project I am undertaking which I delete after it is finalized.

I have probably collected what can be considered far too large number of pins, but I do not believe my boards can be considered a diary quite yet. To do that I might use Pinterest’s note-taking option to collect images and reflect on them and how I can either learn or by inspired by them instead of just building a hoard of images.

The idea of using my own sketches as a visual diary is very appealing. Recently, I have heard the artist Steve Huston talk about having a separate sketchbook not for practice or for fleshing out concepts (which is what I usually use my sketchbooks for) but specifically as a place to draw things that I know I will later reference. Continuing on the idea of building a style, If I know a lot of my work has fantastical animals, then I will take some time to fill a diary with animals that I can later reference from in larger pieces. I struggle with selecting interesting environments sometimes (I noticed that I tend to default to a summer scene with mountains in the background), so it would be a good idea to have a place to reference environments I have drawn myself and I know will work with the type of art I create. The same can be said with color palettes, types of faces, clothing, etc.

Drawing is an essential part of the work of an illustrator. It is also my favorite part. As one can tell from the presentation of my previous work above, I am more proficient at drawing than painting. Though I am working on developing my painting skills as well, since painting requires a better understanding of shape rather than line, of which I now have a decent understanding.

This particular exercise requires that I select a reference photo and draw it four times. The first in a detailed manner, the second faster and more roughly, the third by not using the photograph as reference, but the drawings, and the last without using any reference at all.

The photo above is one I took myself on a trip to Bran Castle (popularly known as Dracula’s Castle, though the historical Vlad III never actually stepped foot in it, nor does it match the descriptions of the structure in Bram Stoker’s Dracula). I chose the image because of the dramatic background and because I liked the way the figures were composed in the image, especially the pose of the father and daughter in the middle. I had wanted to crop it at first, but I liked the way the sightlines of the characters at the sides of the image aided the composition. Cropping from the top would have erased the more interesting bits of the image. To create a more focused composition, I instead cut out certain details and characters such as a few men in the background who ruined the line of the lighted ledge in the background, a young man on the left who broke the silhouette of the character closer to the viewer and some of the details in the already complicated roof.

Once the sketch was sorted out, I took out a larger (32.5cm x 23.5cm) piece of paper and drew the composition more carefully with graphite pencils, paying attention to values and to the proportions of the photograph. Though I did change some things in regards to proportions to bring the characters closer together, eliminating some unused space. I used this drawing to figure out the details of the roof, the hand positions, and how to draw the shadows on their faces in this small format without making them look odd. Another reason I chose this photograph was the lighting, as the background is in shadow while the foreground is brightly lit, and I wanted to also show that.

The next two drawings were a little less time-consuming since I already had the basic composition sorted out, I mostly used them as tests for pushing the values, memorizing the image, and for trying out the hatching technique I wanted to use for the final image. I ended up cutting out another character, one of the girls from the fountain, and simplifying the shape of the well in order to streamline the image. The leaves in the background kept coming in and out, but I eventually kept them in the final result for the sake of texture.

The final image was drawn with a regular o.5mm black pen. I kept most of the hatching vertical in the building and even in the framing foreground characters, while the three characters in the middle and the well were drawn with hatching that describes their forms more in order to make them separate from the rest of the image. I used the information gained in the previous four drawings to achieve a cleaner result in this final image, not to mention that without the previous images I most definitely would have not managed to draw this from memory. I was surprised at how accurately I retained the details (though I did get a bit of the roof wrong, not that anyone who hasn’t seen the reference would know).

Using the theme “hybrid” I was required to create two illustrations. The first in the order “draw-scan-color” and the second “color-print-draw”. But before I could start drawing or coloring I needed a concept. The theme “hybrid” brought animals to mind, and since I enjoy drawing animals but do not do it often enough, I decided to go with that. The way I prefer to brainstorm is with spider diagrams, so I wrote various animal ideas around the word “hybrid” until I thought I had a varied enough selection and then basically chose the animals I felt like drawing. I chose three animals: a cardinal, a lizard, and a squirrel. I deliberately chose a bird a mammal and a reptile to make things more interesting.

I wanted to choose a characteristic of each animal to make a new “hybrid” creature, but in order to do that I first needed to familiarize myself with the animals. The sketches were fairly quick, done with a pen because I prefer to not be able to erase in the early stages. I drew the animals from different angles and in the lizard’s case I drew several types of lizards until I found one whose skin texture I liked. The armadillo lizard has spiky scales with interesting shapes which I wanted to incorporate in the design. I drew several squirrels until I got to a point where I felt I understood the way its body looks from different angles, because I was certain that I wanted the body and tail of the squirrel to be part of at least one design. Birds like the cardinal are fairly easy to draw, the only thing I needed to be sure about is the shape of the beak and the its proportions to the head and the black beard shape on its neck. I was not sure what characteristics of the bird I wanted, I played around with using the wings, the head or just the coloring.

The animals went through several stages until I had two I was happy with. I wanted to have a different animal for each of the two techniques specified in the exercise. For the first technique, I settled on a hybrid with a squirrel body, lizard skin and robin coloring, for the second a combination of the robin body and coloring with the squirrel head and tail.

Starting with the draw-scan-color process I selected a piece of paper and my favorite medium, ink, not only because I like it but because scanning the high-contrast ink offers better results than scanning coloring pencils or watercolor or other softer mediums if the intent is to achieve all the coloring digitally. The  drawing was done first in pencil then with a dip pen. After scanning and moving into Photoshop, I did my best to color it. The coloring process was a little more experimental than usual, because I also colored the lines not just inside them. It is not something I usually do when scanning drawings, but I liked the experiment and ended up completing the drawing in this way.

The color-print-draw process was done straight in Photoshop with barely any sketching underneath. I mostly relied on previous sketches for reference. I painted the hybrid bird in color, doing my best to pay attention to value at the same time, and also trying not to use lines. I tend to work with line more than shape, so painting is still a bit of a challenge.

I was not sure what to do after that, though. The images were printed out but looked fairly complete, even the one in black and white. I tried my best to draw some lines on the color printed version and color in the black and white one, but I can’t say I like the results.

As in, less color is more than more color. This exercise consists of two sets of five drawings, the first done in three colors and the second in two. We had to select household items beginning with the same letter and draw those. At first was not sure if they all had to be in a single composition or not, but I decided the items I chose (via another brainstorming session) would look better separately. Taking a bit of artistic liberty and simplifying, I drew the 5 items in from house.

I chose not to waste color choices with black and white, since I could only use three, but I did have to use something dark for the outlines and something light for the highlights. The best highlight color is usually a light yellow, as yellow is the lightest of the colors, and the darkest color is purple, so I used a dark purple for the outlines. The third color used for the mid tones is a light blue, because blue is a fairly neutral color (more so than green or pink), though I could have used a ochre or some sort of beige.

The two-toned objects were done in cream and orange. I can’t articulate why I like this combination, but I do (perhaps it looks like dessert to me?). I had a bunch of other options before this one, but in the moment this just seemed like fun. There were options of using some high contrast red and white or perhaps black and yellow, or lower contrast colors from the same family like a turquoise and a darker blue, or a green and neon green.

Surface design is something that we are nearly always surrounded with in our modern lives but also something we very rarely think about. Especially in terms of who conceived and made that design, whether it be a wallpaper, pillowcase, t-shirt pattern or even desktop background. Here are four illustrators, found either through the Surface Design Association or through my own browsing.

1. Kate Loudoun-Shand

I will start with someone who, to my inexperienced eye, produces what I would call “typical surface design work”. Her designs are simple and have a slightly textured handmade style. They have a sense of dimension while remaining minimalistic. The colors are pleasant and the prints are versatile enough to fit in any home. In terms of depth created by perspective, there is none. The style is purely decorative and I could only identify one or two  designs which include a shadow to the design, which is the most depth they are meant to have. She works with may mediums such as inks, gouache and house-paint, and the final deigns can be both screen printed and digitally printed.

2. Susan Purney Mark

Susan Purney Mark’s work in contrast is much more textured. and layered. Her lines and use of value emulate depth in an abstract way, as in the first two images, or in a slightly more representational way, as in the next three, two of which very clearly emulate either flats or construction cranes. The cranes grow in size from left to right and the road slants down from left to right, creating the illusion of perspective.

This is more extreme in the last two works of a industrial steel skeleton where the cropped one point perspective is obvious.

These works are also meant to stand on their own rather than be used as patterns for wallpapers or cushions, which definitely affects the way they are designed. The patterns by Kate Loudoun-Shand are meant to be simple, blend in with a multiple people’s design choices when it comes to home décor, and of course they are meant to repeat. And while one can take one of these works and copy-paste it multiple times until it forms a repeating pattern, not all of them would look like something one would want on their linens.

3. Catalina Estrada

Estrada’s work is detailed, decorative and vibrant. She creates patters for fabrics, wallpapers, product designs such as perfumes and drinks, and illustrations for posters or day planners. Her designs are inspired by nature and Latin American folklore. Her folk art inspired work, evoking designs from Latin American clothing, festival masks and pottery, does not necessarily need to create a sense of space, though she draws pouncing tigers and communing birds. Her work does not as much repeat as it is mirrored in a symmetrical composition or whirls in a circle or mandala. Her wallpapers and murals are a little different, as she tends to create a little depth through scale or tone. Either by having a main subject or character surrounded by smaller flowers or geometrical objects, or creating layers of depth by subtracting elements from the composition as it goes “back”, as in the owl wallpaper above.

4. Leslie Horan Simon

And lastly, Leslie Horan Simon, the artist I personally found most inspiring. She uses felt and wool to make beautiful compositions. Just looking at these made me want to start cutting up fabric and put it together again to create an illustration, which is definitely not something I have done before. Though she doesn’t use just any cut up fabric, but very nice wool that she prepares, felts and spins herself. Her work varies from simple mosaics with the same shape like the squares and roof shingles above to the lovely collage with flowers and a window. Her work is mostly abstract but she does create depth through scale, as we can tell that the butterfly in the window illustration is closest to us, and through direction of the lines like in the art deco sunrise composition where the triangular shape pointing to the sun creates the impression of road, or the way in the last illustration above the shrinking lines create the impression of striated earth underneath far off hills and thin clouds.

Perspective isn’t something I am completely oblivious to, but I can’t say that it comes to me easily yet. I have used one, two, and three point perspective before, but I had to look up what isometric drawing was. The exercise is pretty straightforward for the first four drawings: simply use those types of perspective to depict the same room. The next two drawings are a little more creative. The fifth requires a room drawn with different rules that the ones above (I chose to use all diagonals and whatever means required to make the room feel tall) and the sixth requires making a flat drawing or pattern inspired by the room. I started by re-familiarizing myself with the principles of perspective by looking up some images and videos.

One Point Perspective

Two Point Perspective

Three Point Perspective

Images of the Room

Sketching General Layouts

Drawing on the Larger Paper

One Point

Shading

One Point

One point perspective gives the impression of depth in the sense that it’s like drilling a hole in the middle of the page into a different place. It’s very symmetrical and harmonious in the way that it’s simple because everything converges on a single point in the, many times but not always , in the very middle of the composition.

Two Point

Two point composition is the best for representing dimension or volume. The lines drawn from the two points intersect  and create the sense that the thing at that point comes forward from within the page.

Three Point

Three point perspective creates drama because it is made to represent height in some way. The only straight lines are at the horizon, if within the page, and at the vertical line between the top and bottom points. Unlike in one point perspective where all verticals are parallel with the side of the page and the lines representing the side of the object facing the viewer are all parallel with the bottom of the page, or in two point perspective where the vertical lines remain parallel with the side of the page, but the horizontal all converge at the two points.

Isometric

Isometric drawing is not meant to convey space in the same way the perspective drawings are. It is a more technical form of drawing used to show with precision the place where elements of a room or a piece of equipment belong. The proportions of the objects in the room I drew do not change according to the position of the “viewer” they remain consistent throughout.

No Point

(again, I just set two rules: to not use any vertical or horizontal lines for dynamism,

and to make the room appear as tall as possible, because that is the first impression

one gets from entering it)

The Flat Drawing

Flat Drawing

Now, I could have left this pretty simple by simply duplicating it a few times and leaving it at that, but I ended up using color eventually because I had never tried making a flat drawing before. The elements I chose to represent the room were the bloom chandelier, the two paintings on the walls and the tall window with a curtain. I chose to make it vertical, in keeping with the theme of height and drew some simple swirls in order to connect the elements and because they continue the design of the twisted chandelier “flower stems”.

As to representing space, it doesn’t really. Excepting the window, which is drawn from an exaggerated lower angle in order to give the impression of height or looking up at the flower chandelier.

I duplicated the illustration digitally and basically just started playing around with the colors, contrast and saturation. Here I allowed myself to depart from the theme of the room eventually, though I  did use green at the beginning, mimicking the upholstery.

The color combination I ended up liking the most was this dark purple and black with cyan lines. Not something I would have every considered from the get go. I tweaked the levels a little because I would need to shrink the drawing in order to multiply it and the pattern needed to stay visible. Then all I did was duplicate it until the image was very small. Though I do like it better when you can see the details of the illustration.

I have never made a pattern before, and I am not entirely sure if this is what the exercise required for working flat, but it is what I personally thought of. The final result is fine, though now that I look back at it, I think it would have been better to connect the drawings as right now it looks less like a pattern and more like…someone just duplicated a single image a bunch of times. This is good to know for the future. I might look up some pattern making educational materials later.