SKETCHBOOK UPDATES – WEEK 7
SKETCHBOOK UPDATES
As stated in previous blogs, I felt as if my sketchbook was lacking in any sense of creative responses and outcomes due to my potential demotivating sense of self in line with enjoying the academic reading side of my work and struggling to find the balance. I also struggled with keeping creative when I felt like I had ran out of ideas, however I remember someone telling me that if we’re stuck it’s most likely due to the fact that we had not undertaken enough primary and secondary research to influence ideas and I agree with this to some level, therefore I undertook more readings based on more refined themes and delved into more unique and interesting views of my concept. This therefore allowed me to become more creative again and remember that my sketchbook is a work in progress and should not be overthought about; I have always found that my more creative and unique experimental developments have come from when I have stopped overthinking every step and work methodically at first to begin with.
The collages I ended up making were successful to me, I wanted to be resourceful and create multi media works which led me to keeping the tracing paper I had used in my mark making pages as a way to stop the paint transferring from one page to another. Resulting in me using them for backgrounds on my collages; using found scraps especially with marks on them or signs of wear, paint etc that show an interesting texture on them are really effective in using within collage as it adds a more textural element to the work allowing it to have more character and dimension. Using the idea of layouts and white space in my mind due to the fact that I need to look at my work from a more graphic design perspective as I will continue to be using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator for my work, I played around with this to enhance the focus of each piece of work. I personally didn’t like the colour used within the green and yellow collage which resulted in me editing it to become black and white, which is more effective in my eyes as the image comes together a bit more with the mark making which is separated more in the first original collage. The last collage was an attempt at me illustrating however I did not enjoy the final illustration product I did but thought that I should not throw anything away, leading me to ripping it up like the other images I had found and using it in the same way to create a distorted puzzle style image.
Creating the mark making pages as a response to Daphne Oram’s work was a way for me to loosen up slightly and stop overthinking my work; some of the pate transferred to the other pages as well as the fact that some pages ripped as when the paint dried the pages stuck together and placing them apart led to tear in the pages, however this led me to become less precious with my sketchbook and was therefore a good outcome; I have always found that a sketchbook with good character is not made from perfectly constructed imagery; the notes and progress sketches are the best part in my eyes as it shows the journey from idealisation to conception. I felt as these were also fairly successful as they probe to have a lot of character due to the movement of the lines reaching all ends of the page and the quick upwards and outwards brush strokes that mimic motion.
The last two feature some illustrations that I had done with no particular aim, basing them on what I saw in the mirror while not trying to make them look like me, I was just using my face for an easily accessible reference. Creating continuous line drawings have always been one of my favourite activities as I feel like they improve my drawing skill due to the fact that you have to focus carefully on the shapes being made by the subject to inform the lines that you’re going to make, whereas in sketching it’s usually focused on the lines combining rather than an overall shape being formed (for me personally) and therefore this doodles came out to be fairly decent; they’re lacking in any substance in terms of originality and therefore this could indicate that some further research into illustrative skills as well as potential influential illustrators could progress my skills and contextualisation, although I am extremely new to illustrating.
Changing my sketchbook from an only physical version, which was going to be scanned in and placed into a PDF, has changed into using a digital sketchbook, constructed on Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign due to a variety of factors. Pricing came into mind; printing constantly would be allow a lot of money to be spent on my own printing ink or the library computer printing services, the time consuming effort of sticking in pictures correctly which could be spent doing something else productive, being able to easily adapt pages and fill in gaps, allows to organise it easily, being and to add my digital work on pages easier (considering the bulk of my work will be digital it seems appropriate), can edit imagery, can still easily annotate and add text etc. I’ve essentially analysed what I was struggling with when using my sketchbook and adapted it to fit my working style.
Next steps, take this work and progress it further through digital manipulation / experimentation.
