The sketching process :

This first draft of a sketch took around two minutes and this is probably one of the most crucial times I find when starting any piece and especially a drawing. It allowed me to set the main composition of the subject and the proportions so the subject would fit ell within the A4 paper size I used.

The drawing process :

As for the actual drawing process I found that in between the halfway point I had lost motivation and sense of direction where this drawing was going towards.  Although I kept with it as I love using pencil as my main source of medium and didn’t give up like I normally would and even though I’m not exactly thrilled to have created it as I could have done better, I’m still glad I did because I realised that it still matched my themes and portrayed the stressful and intoxicating feel people can have on you that I wanted it to have.

Extra practice before the actual drawing :

This five minute practice just before starting with the actual drawing was used for me as a warm up because I hadn’t drawn all day and felt like I had been quite stiff if I simply thrown myself straight into the drawing process.

My experience and overall pieces produced :

During this workshop I was taken aback at how much I learned even though I had used photoshop quite a lot throughout my school years in the photography course.

The most interesting aspect was the clipping effect which I learned was a technique to be able to merge a photo within a shape which I didn’t know before and was very eye opening because it opens so many possibilities, especially when it comes to creating something digital that looks like a print and can also be made to come across as if it was made manually with the right effects.

On the left is actually my second attempt at creating a digital print and it’s my favourite out of the two I created, mainly due to its composition, it reminded me of the times I would spend creating junk journaling layouts in my journal, using whatever I had collected at hand.

Overall a very interesting experience and an unusual change to what I normally like doing, as an artist I used to find it quite intimidating to change my usual manual way of doing art to digital.

As a whole this process was very new to me so I was slightly skeptical of how I would feel by the end. Having gone throat with it now I can say it was not what I expected and I would very much enjoy to produce more work like this because it’s something that lets me experiment and be messy with art which I used to never do before, and it even lets me use colour within my art with less stress; as I found whatever shade or colour you mix, it’s likely that the outcome will come out with something interesting and that you’ll be pleased with. In this case I chose the ribcage as I didn’t want to overcomplicate my process as a beginner.

Something that surprise me was how quick some of the steps to create these prints were and even though I like taking my time with art a lot of the times it was a nice change to my usual speed and made the creativity in the room flow much better.

Partner collar print outcome :

Corrupted stencil and print process :

Unfortunately with this last print I accidentally managed to misplace my stencil and it resulted into a slightly cut off rib and uneven layout. Although at first I didn’t exactly notice this, meaning at first glance it’s not something anyone would notice unless I were to point it out in front of them. I do believe it gives character to the print and I really liked the process of mixing the black and white ink together to create a marbly effect.

Relief printing on A4 card :

When starting this experiment I didn’t have many ideas as to where I wanted to go with the end result which is something I took from the previous project when building my 3D model. The idea of just taking a pencil and beginning was the most exciting this time and I found it a lot more enjoyable, knowing I also had previous thumbnails to look back on which definitely inspired this print after all.

I would have preferred to add more spiders if I were to re-do this specific layout as I very much liked the way the skeleton gives the whole pice an oomph. The rectangles I decided to add to the background were something I thought of last minute which worked out quite well in bringing the whole piece into a unit other than just a few objects floating on a flat surface.

Outcomes :

I would have definitely benefited from adding more ink to the paper as the final prints were looking slightly discoloured, however I think that effect does add to the creepiness I wanted the print to have which worked in my favour even though at first glance I thought of it as a mistake.

Mono printing on A3 paper :

Being completely honest with myself I never liked the process of mono printing simply because it always ended up being messy; although through mimicking the same composition as my last relief print I found that I was able to be a lot more variable with the mark making I was drawing.

The end result wasn’t my best but I as impressed at myself at how closely accurate I was wit the composition, considering the fact I tried hard not to touch the paper with my hand in the process to avoid as little smudging as possible and I was glad I even managed t0 add some tone to one of the squares even though next time I would have added another, possibly in the top or middle tomato the objects pop out more and make the whole piece more balanced.

I thought the colour I chose was also very fitting because it gave the objects the bloody atmosphere my 3d model was originally supposed to have, and I can appreciate the morbid feel to it.

Thoughts on this process:

Using different tools as light sources like for example a phone torch or a soft light box in this case I really enjoyed exploring the outcomes each gave me, especially depending on where I positioned the torch which created different shadows and ended up giving my world an eerier atmosphere which fit well with  my 3D world because its essence is dead human remains being eaten away by sewage insects.

In these practice outcomes I found that I lost myself in choosing basic compositions from my thumbnails and photographic processes and although I don’t mind this less thought provoking style in art I still thing the skeleton piece is somewhat successful. I would definitely go back and add more layers to this piece but I still enjoyed making something which its focus isn’t so much on detail and accuracy of realism.

Black and white rough thumbnail sketches:

Practicing with thumbnails before heading towards a final piece was always something that was encouraged while I was growing up and when I wanted to create any outcome of any sort. I understand that thumbnails are usually just a vague perception of what you might want to explore different compositions and test out colour themes as well as other factors before jumping into the commitment of the final piece and in that sense it’s a very comforting planning stage for any artist. Although with this body of work I found I didn’t really give myself the challenge of creating more intricate compositions which I would have liked and that was also possible due to subconsciously disliking the model I created prior which discouraged me from going forward, however I’m glad I pushed through it and created these thumbnails regardless because it’s something I normally dread because I end up focusing on so many options in which the final piece could end up going into rather than just getting on with it.

I definitely realised I liked the ink medium a lot more than the others simply because I could create a variety of marks with the cross hatching method than with the other materials. Black and white media is also something that interests me a lot in terms of setting a morbid mood which I tend to drift towards a lot of the time.

Rough thumbnail sketches in colour:

Photographic process of taking reference photos for the task above:

The different approach of cutting out a square in a piece of paper to create an aspect of a viewfinder to photograph references from the model was very helpful at closing into specific areas in my 3D world which without it would have been more difficult in my opinion. This was an unusual shift to how I normally gather my reference photos to work from and I will most likely be using it again.

The process from start to finish of this particular exercise I found to be quite bitter. This was most likely only my second or third time doing such an experiment with art and different materials which at the beginning I made sure not to overthink too much and grab simply what caught my eye and collaged things together which visually suited each other in my point of view. However, the more I worked on the composition I realised I lost my train of thoughts and in the end I wished I spent some time figuring out the background and middle ground a bit more accurately instead of having it slightly scattered around everywhere.

I chose the theme of flora and fauna with a slight surrealism approach merged together and focused mainly on things that I wouldn’t normally, that being bugs and spiders. the scenery reminds me somewhat of a deteriorating crime scene in the sewers where the skeleton is falling and being slowly eaten away by all the underground creatures.

Furthermore I experimented with collage shapes and contrasting perspectives on the spiders and human bones. The aim was to have the spiders that would normally look bigger in the foreground, look in fact smaller and vice versa with the spiders in the background being extremely large and depending on the angle that you look at this model from, it would either look as if they were coming towards you from above or scorching away from you in the front.

Overall, I can say I enjoyed some parts of this workshop more than others like the collage aspect although it’s not something I could say inspires me to make more of this type of three dimensional art.