these are some drawing I did at the booth museum. There were lots of different stuffed animals and skeletons there but I found I really liked the bats and so spent a few hours there drawing them. i played around with the size and angle, choosing to try and them look a little more interesting. the pen drawing of the face was actually from a very small bat that I wanted to make look creepy. I then did a pencil drawing of the bat with its wings out, I did this at an angle so that it would look a little more menacing, a but like a phantom rising. I then went into this drawing with watercolour and pen later on. I really enjoyed drawing these bats and so decided to use them as the subject for the tell me about it project.
These pictures are for my starting research on bats. i did this before my visual research to create a bit more interest for me, this would also give me an idea of what i would like to communicate as i go through my project doing more research.
i then went to do a little visual research, trying to do quicker pen drawings. i wanted to do quick drawings to encourage me to look at a few species of bats quickly and recognise a few differences between species. this also allowed me to begin learning the names of a few different types.
i then began to combine the drawing and research to compile some information of particular species and get an idea of what species I wanted to look into and possibly include in my outcome.
here I looked into a bats wing doing a work a little more detailed using a dip pen and ink.
I still wanted to do more research at this point, but also still wanted to look at bats visually. i also wanted to experiment with media a little bit being unsure with what I was going to do with my outcome. at this point I was thinking of a book with text so that it would be informative. i looked into water colour paint with pen and then looked at markers and fineliners. i really enjoyed doing that but felt it did take a long time, so may not be suitable considering the time frame for the final outcome.
I did some more research into bats, beginning to think what I would want to include in the final outcome. From doing this research I also found my drawing more interesting as I was beginning to think about the bats I was drawing and their behaviours. I had spent a long time researching by this point and was able to call a lot of facts about the different species, echolocation and mythology from memory.
here I wanted to d more quick visual research. The aim of this was to get me looking at bats and their structure in simple ways, creating an understanding of their form.
I then began to look into a few different medias. I looked at using dip and ink pen, this was fun but took a very long time. i then began to look into using coffee, which I found really nice as you could make a very pale pigment but it was a good colour for the fur or the wings. I was very sad the drawing didn’t smell like coffee though. coffee was also easy to mix with watercolour which is what I did for the background so that red wasn’t so bright. I then looked at watercolour and ink to create a silhouette, I use the wooden end of the paintbrush to experiment with the mark making a little bit to get thicker lines. i then experiment with an ink wash which was surprisingly difficult as it was easy to get the colouring way too dark.
i then went onto ding the planning for my final outcome. at this point I knew I was going to do a book. I had been to book arts and made a hardback with 4 sections. However I did miscalculate the amount of pages in the book. I had thought there were only 32, so I planned for that many. when I realised I had lots of extra pages to fill I just added more information of different species. i was rather pressed for time at this point to get everything done. in hindsight i would have planned the book out on in design just using sketches for different layouts. i also would have typed the information put this onto the bat drawings on photoshop rather than writing it all out by hand. though I was very glad that I had such good notes in my book that most of the information came straight from my sketchbook.
