Drawing Upon Inspiration

• Consider what drawing means to you? We are here to question, celebrate, explore and challenge concepts of what drawing is. You are to be provided with a photographic image as your starting point. This image will provide a reference point/trigger and inspiration for when you conduct your drawing investigations. You may respond to themes suggested by the photograph, e.g. sense of time, place, history, relationships etc. but you are not limited by this and so can develop and explore/expand upon your own interests and how these relate to your given photo. 

For the start of the project, we were each individually given an old photograph, which we then had to work from. The photograph that I was given, depicted a young woman- smiling, and with her hand on her hip. Depicted behind the women, were beach huts, with other men and woman standing around, also wearing swimming costumes.

Originally, when starting the project I did want to create a some kind of animation/ story book from the photograph we were given; however, we did have very little time to complete this project, and knowing myself, I didn't want to over complicate every tiny detail. In some ways I'm glad that I didn't end up doing an animation/ story for this project- as I'm still taking my time to figure out my own style of drawing, and I don't want to rush into a big project like that, with not enough preparation. However, animation is such a fascinating medium and I would love to try it out in the future.

This decision to discontinue with the story book left me quite confused however, after visiting the V&A gallery in London; I was slightly less confused with my project. The gallery itself holds some of the most profound figurative ancient sculptures; so mesmerising and delicate in their shape. As this projects title was called 'Drawing Upon Inspiration' knew that I wanted to begin my project with what I had previously seen at the exhibition. 

For these particular drawings, I wanted to incorporate these statues sense of elegance and grace of their posture into my drawings, which I feel I have done quite successfully. However, in terms of my personal style, I wanted to incorporate a sense of quirkiness into these drawings- by slightly manipulating their faces- transforming these beautiful women into per say 'beautiful' aliens

Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of these drawings. Essentially my aim for these drawings was trying to discover my own type of style of drawing - which is very important to me. I wanted to primarily focus on drawing only women, as I find there is a real sense of elegance, and beauty in a woman's figure. However,  I wanted to experiment further with making these drawings of women's figures slightly different- different in less idealised, perfected way.

I noticed that in my previous drawings, all the women had been depicted with perfect hour-glass bodies, which led me to focus on different body shapes, but also finding peace with your body. I've had trouble at times coming to tersm with my figure, which made this project wuite sepcial for me- as I wnated to project this idea of finding peace with your figure, and loving your body- no matter what shape or size you are.

For these two red compositions, I was experimenting with backgrounds in my images. I think that some of my drawings can be quite plain, which is why it was interesting to experiment with this. The image below, is quite comical- as i wanted to accentuate this woman's figure as much as I possibly could. It sort of reminded me of some of these women I see on Instagram with extremely large breasts, and abnormally big lip fillers. 

For these two images here, I was experimenting a little further with accentuating these drawings with more lines, making them slightly bolder, and more striking in their composition. For the image below, I added used watercolour to fill in this drawings body. 

Making Sculptures

 Although I had drawn all of these images, I knew that I wanted to experiment further with another medium. My boyfriend who does sculpture, suggested that I should try making some sculptures of these women. I've never really experimented with this medium so it was very interesting and enjoyable to do so.

 *****ADD SCULPTURES *****

As I had done so previously I wanted to experiment with creating different shaped bodies- making some ridiculously curvy, some very slim and some very large. I think these bodies as a series works very successfully.

 Conclusion 

From the beginning of the project, I was given an photograph of a woman- in which I enlarged this image, and drew out the outline of her figure- following this drawing, I experimented with drawing other very precise, particularly 'idealised' drawings of women, with very neatly  drawn bodies, but rather unusual facial features. Following this, I began to start making my drawings slightly more deformed, making some of their bodies slightly larger than others or more misshaped,  but also retaining these weird, unusual faces. Once I had played around with drawing different bodies, in different styles, making some more bold than others- I knew that I wanted to take my project a little further, which is when I began to use sculpture as a medium for my project. Creating around six different small sculptures of women, I experimented with making their bodies different sizes. 

Drawing Upon Inspiration: One Day Intervention

As part of the drawing upon inspiration project, that was given to us prior this week- we were given another studio day to not only work on this project, but possibly come up with some more, new techniques to collaborate with this project.

We were told that we had to enlarge the small, old fashioned image to an a4 size, and then work from it. When I arrived in class, we were each given an A3 sheet of paper, and told to just start making different patterns, or shapes from our original old fashioned image- this was quite overwhelming for me at the beginning, as I usually take my time to perfect my work however, this exercise allowed us all to think quick, and to just work from our instincts.

I began my composition by firstly drawing a woman onto the page, which I then copied twice more. Following this, I experimented using this gold paper, which you stick onto the page, and then tear off creating this unusual, faint effect. 

I then began to draw in different images into my composition, such as these unusual eyes, which I accentuated using pencil and black pen- to make them stand out slightly more. 

The composition as a whole still looked a bit plain, so I decided to draw in another figure into my drawing, and another face- but I also kept adding some more of this gold paper onto the image. 

Lastly, I used some black chalk to really define the figures at the top of the image; as it looked quite plain before doing so. 

In some ways todays session was very successful, as I experimented with different materials. I also think it was successful as I didn't really take too much of my time caring about making the image perfect, which is something that I always try to do in my work. However, I do think that I could have maybe experimented with collaborating some different materials a little more onto the composition. 

Ice Breaker Project

For the 'ice breaker' project, we were all put into groups of around ten people, in which we then had to somehow find a way to create a presentation on how we 'broke the ice' between all of us. It was slightly uncomfortable at first, as we had to practically force ourselves to make friends with people we'd never met before.

We initially all did some brainstorming together as a group, figuring out each others interests, likes and dislikes; but also planning what we were going to do as a group. This was some of the planning that we did in preparation.

 Getting to know each others interests... 

Eventually in our group we all decided that we would go to the pub, and draw each other. When I arrived there, we just drew each other for a couple of hours, having a drink and chatting, which was very nice. I was initially quite nervous before I went to the pub to meet them all, but because we were practically forced to talk to our group, it made me actually quite relaxed in the end and everyone was lovely.

For our presentation on how we 'broke the ice', we just hung up our work all together, and spoke about what we did. From the images below, it's very interesting to see everyones different styles of drawing and techniques so early on in the year.

Summer Project

For our summer project, we were each given a list of different words, in which we then had to each choose one word from the list to base our project around. Looking through the 20 or so different ways that I could approach my project; I was mainly interested in 'Observation of the self', 'Effect of time' and 'Unusual viewpoints and perspectives'. After a lot of consideration, I eventually chose 'unusual perspectives/ viewpoints' as I thought that this was the most interesting one to choose from. However, although I had chosen this- I was still very fond of another title from the list 'being a stranger in a strange land'-as I was looking at unusual perspectives, it led me to think about the ways children perceive adults from their point of view; and how when were little everything we see seems so much more exaggerated. Prior to choosing my word, I had been looking at the artist Egon Schiele- who also depicts his drawn figures from particularly unusual angles; but also exaggerates his figures bodies, making their hands extremely large in comparison to their tiny physiques.

Planning 

So far I have collected images of Egon Schieles distinctivly unusual drawings- using his work as a starting base for my own. Schiele portrays such an unusual representation of the human body in his drawings; that could be somewhat disturbing in many ways, as these bodies look so dishevelled and skeletal.

These are some of my quick sketches that I did in preparation for taking my photographs. I knew from the start that I wanted to create this illusion of people looking extremely large, and out of proportion. For my sketches I drew people with tiny heads, contrasted against their much larger bodies.

In preparation for taking my photographs, I looked on google images to find some images, typing in 'people from below' this is what I found. I think these images are very useful as they depict very disproportionate and abnormal people from low angles. Whilst taking my photographs, I would like for them to look like these.

Taking photographs 

I knew that for beginning my project, I wanted to take photographs of my friends and family members, as a starting base for this project. In terms of taking these images, I used my iPhone- as I feel that it's very good quality but also very light weight allowing me to take my photographs quickly, and sufficiently in different positions; also self timer, which is something that I used for the majority of my project.

These were the first images that I took in response to the 'unusual perspectives' project brief, in which I used self timer to take these images. Surprisingly this process had quite a lot of complications- as I had to firstly rush into the pose, making sure that I hadn't knocked down my phone and also making sure it was tilted at the right angle. Overall, I feel that both of these images are very successful in creating this sense of disproportion and abnormality.

I chose to photograph my boyfriend, Jules for this project; as he has a very slender body similarly to these bodies in schools work. As I was taking these photographs of Jules, I wanted to capture as many different and unusual viewpoints as possible- making him appear as this extremely large and terrifying character. The outcome of these photos were actually far more successful than I had anticipated. Although I took many other photographs, this was the one that I chose for my final piece. I found this image so interesting for many different reason- the scale of his feet compared to the rest of his body- looks as if his feet are coming out of the image. 

This was a photograph that I took of my brother Charlie. I think this image is successful for many reasons; as his head looks tiny in contrast to his much larger physique. Whilst taking the photograph, I asked him to hold his hands out into the camera, which I think actually works quite effectively- making the image slightly more dramatic, and interesting.

Using photoshop

Once I had taken these photographs; I thought that it would be interesting to experiment with another medium, photoshop; editing these images so that they would appear far more abnormal and deformed in their structure than originally. Although I have previously used photoshop in the past, it was still quite challenging getting to grips with using it this time around. Another reason why I thought photoshop would be an interesting medium was from looking at artists Egon Schiele, who really excentuates his bodies in his work- making their hands and arms appear much larger and abnormal than the rest of his body.

Drawing the photographs 

From the photographs that I took, I decided to draw the image of my brother, my boyfriend and myself for my final project. Using a very thin black ink pen, I was able to draw very precise, detailed drawings- which was also very time consuming. Although, I am pleased with the images- it was also quite challenging trying to draw this particular angle that I had initially taken them from; making sure that their heads were a lot smaller than their larger physiques. 

Displaying the drawings in my room. 

For this image here, I was just playing around with the filters using the Instagram app. I really like the  saturated orange effect of this image, against the sharp black- as it really accentuates the sharpness of the drawing, and highlights the black a lot more. However, I do wish that I had edited the other images the same as I did so with this one. 

Once I had drawn all three images, I decided to use photoshop to overlay these drawings with the original photographs. Although I had used photoshop in the past, it was quite challenging at first trying to get to grips with it again. However, I began by putting the original image into photoshop, I then went onto ‘layer’ and clicked ‘new layer’, which allowed me to then put in the image of my drawing. Once this was completed, I had to select the whole image of my drawing using CTR+T, which allowed me to copy and paste this image onto my original photograph. The next part of the process was turning down the opacity on the image of the drawing, so that you could see through to both images.


Although I was very pleased with these images, they did all look a bit faint and unfinished in their colour , prior to turning the opacity down. So, I decided to edit them even further. Turning down their highlights, and turning up their saturation and contrast.

***** FINAL IMAGES ******

Conclusion

Overall, I feel my work for the summer project was quite successful. I began to look at illustrator Egon Schiele, who really accentuates the features in his figurative portraits, making them look very deformed and abnormal. This abnormality was something that intrigued me, which led me to choose 'Unusual perspectives/ viewpoints' for my project. Taking photographs of my friends, family and myself- i began to explore the different positions, and angles to take photographs from. It was interesting taking these images, as photography isn't something that is very familiar to me however, after this project, I feel much more comfortable with this medium, and I will continue to use photography in the future. The next step to this project was drawing the photographs that I had previously taken. Using a very thin black ink pen, I drew three very precise, detailed drawings, one of myself, my brother and my boyfriend. I did not find this part of the process too challenging, as drawing is something that has always come very easy to me, and I did really enjoy the process of this.

Another medium I explored during this project was photoshop- although I have used it in the past, it was quite challenging at first getting to grips with it. However, after a lot of practise I eventually got the hang of it, and produced three final images- in which I had overplayed the original image with the drawings. I am very pleased with the outcome of these images, and I am glad that I edited them a little more, as it really did make the images just that extra bit neater. I do think that the 9 images together as a series does work successfully however; looking back on the project, I feel that maybe I should've drawn all 9 images, instead of only three.