Wednesday 26 June 2013

"Get the Fundamentals down or the fancy stuff won't work." -Randy Pausch


Fundamentals in draftsmanship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=vXoLPU9AklY

The title of this post has become a personal motto for this summer leading into my 3rd year of University. So far I don't feel as if I have bettered my illustration work in the first two years enough and for a long time I blamed my tutors/course for that. Surprisingly that whole 'pointing the finger' is counterproductive...

With this new philosophy sparked into life I am kindling the fire with Feng Zhu's school of design tutorials as well as fanning the flames with a new Youtube channel 'CGMWORKSHOPS'. If you haven't checked these guys out already and you have felt the same way I did, check them out; its a lot of hard work and swallowing of pride but I already see it paying off.

Value Armor

Just trying to paint the values in this armor, didnt really work but hey we're all human! I really want to get on with painting some conceptual landscapes, but its bloody difficult. Might have to take a day out to give it a go.

Tuesday 25 June 2013

Practice Makes...

Thought a bit of an update was in order; I'm currently trying to better my basic technique through life drawing and perspective. Here a select few from the 60 or so I did yesterday, they are 1minute a piece.


I alternated between black and white canvas to try and make my eye see lights and shadows, however when  trying to do this minute on minute I found it a bit tricky.

Thursday 20 June 2013

Progression with Paint

Painting is starting to get addictive, but I don't want to just learn how to paint this summer its important that I reach my target of learning to utilise basics such as perspective, so I'm going to try and combine the two.


This Helmet perspective is based off of the original image (see previous post) but I've created my own angle: to do this you have to draw and understand the image in a 3D format. 

Let me know what you think and keep updated with my work right here.

*EDIT*

Instead of making a new post Thought it would just be better to edit this one with an painting update. 


I dont feel as if this painting was as successful as my others, however it was a more difficult angle. This will be last painting of this helmet but may continue with some perspective line drawings. 

Wednesday 19 June 2013

Learning how to paint...

I've wanted to learn how to digitally paint for a long time now and have finally put pen to tablet to have a go:
This is my first ever painting and am satisfied in so far that it looks kinda like the helmet I was studying from! But I'm looking forward to getting better (hopefully) and trying it out some more.

Saturday 15 June 2013

Book Jacket Design


This cover was for the Penguin Design Competition, unfortunately wasn't shortlisted but am looking forward to entering again next year. For me this was great fun to produce and design, I went through around 50-100 thumbnails to really eliminate and widdle down my ideas.
My mindset from the beginning was to not be generic, so I spent a lot of time looking at the other contestant's design to limit and stop myself from plagiarising. These limitations forced me to be as creative as possible with the text and lead me down a metaphorical and abstract approach.

Wednesday 12 June 2013

Back to the Drawing Board.

Just to expand on my last article, I have created some more drawing. Here I am aiming to think 3 Dimensionally. Where as my usual drawing is in 2D, here I am thinking about the 3D shapes that make the object; in this case my dog Ben.

Already I feel it is much easy and provides much more freedom to make bold marks. First I've drawn the shapes I see that make up the dog, I then work over the top of these shapes. I've found that listening to epic music speed up my hand and stops my brain from over analysing, which can make the drawing suffer. For the mix I listen to you can go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hJ0l64sRJc


Learning to draw again.

I've never been taught to draw so the technique that I have is just things I have picked up from drawing a lot. So I'm going back to basics to be able to 'technically' draw; this means re-learning the proper techniques to draw proportions, negative space etc. In addition to this I have been learning to do this in photoshop. I had a muck about with some shapes a couple minutes ago and made this:

The lines are in blue as to differentiate in the later stage of painting between the linework and the painting at hand. Its a bit of fun and am looking forward to doing more.

Thursday 6 June 2013

Busy day..

I'm almost there with the logo design. Here is the latest iteration of it. It could be lacking colour but it looks as if I have solved the recognisability of the pencil by adding a slant to it. This is the most appropriate association for this logo, otherwise it would have been school pencil yellow, which D&AD sport on their logo. Although a splash of some colour would be nice, tone down the corperate feel to the design.

Final thoughts: The typography has a more intimate relationship with the image which I think brings the idea of Howdon and illustration being closely linked. I wonder if I should pop in some 'go faster' lines to give the viewer the sense of a speedy business, such is the illustration and graphic design world.

After Review...

Thought I'd get back to this now rather than later. Changes: Larger lead - making the 'H' the body of the pencil instead of the negative space in it, the 'i' is still less obvious but am happy. Use of squiggly line (A) and perspective pencil mark (B) help guide the viewers eye.

If you've seen this already try and image you haven't and that you don't know its a pencil... 

(A)

(B)


A day of Graphics and forgetfulness...

Today's been interesting, after collating holiday 'things to do in Corfu' information together into postcards I realised I've hand a bit of graphics withdrawal which led me to making an illustration website layout and trading logo's. 







Website Layout.
White?
Or Black?

I'm happy with the logo itself as it included everything I set out to do; combine an 'H' with the negative space of the pencil leaving an 'i' to be visible. An the other hand, I feel I need to change the typography; not by much, just is lacking in something... 
Just also thought of adding a graphite streak leading the eye to the pencil, the roughness of the graphic texture might balance out the image a bit. 

Suppose it's time to eat lunch..