Category: tell me about it

  

for the book cover I painted acrylic on the hardcover. I named the book Chiroptera as this is the name for the order of the bats, therefore this term includes every different specie of bat. The book doesn’t look quite that dark in person, however I feel that if I had planned this a little better I would have made the cover lighter.

the inside cover I wanted to be simple but interesting so I did quicker pen drawings as I wanted these to be kind of bold. I also thought I would like all the pages to have a simple layout of a drawing and text so it was visually interesting and informative. I used watercolour and pen for the drawing. I also used pen for the text which I chose to do in a simple text style so it could be read easily.

i used the first few pages to show some information about bats. explaining their different diets, anatomy of parts of the body. I kept these parts simple so that the information was universal for all the species of bat I would talk about in the book. I used watercolour as this was quick to get areas of colour down. I used pen a lot throughout the book as this was quick to create structure in a painting, as well as achieving detail. After this I went into the species of different bats, following a similar structure of imagery and text. I would always start off by doing the drawing/painting to make sure the visual was the most important part of the page. in some pages i put the drawings to the side if their was lots of information, but I still tried to make sure they took up as significant part of the page spread.

This is a total of 62 pages. At the start I did pen and not a lot of colour for the first few pages, I wanted to change this and put colour on almost every page as I found this to be more interesting visually.

the last two pages I decided to do a little information on coronavirus. I did this because of the virus becoming a worldwide pandemic. coronavirus is commonly found in different species. But when bats get it their immune systems are able to fight it off very easily. bats have often been killed in the past out of fear for diseases like rabies, as well as being pests. I put this section in the end to try and stop this, its unfair to kill animals for something that wasn’t their fault. Many bats are already endangered, but they are important to our ecosystem and so should not be harmed. I drew a sad bat in a bowl of noodle soup to add a little comedy, but also because I found that idea quite sad.

Overall I am really happy with this project as I haven’t made a book before it was a big job to fill out 62 pages. however this was a big job and i did end up going over on the time we had to do this project by over a week. if i was going back to do this now i would of made the book about half the size and do the drawings on paper before scanning them and adding the text so I could ensure the final product would be a little more refined. However I do really like that the final outcome is all hand drawn and written.

 

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.