Illustration |
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Title: The Middle of Nowhere
Size: 61 cm x 48.3 cm (24 in x 19 in) Medium: Graphite on Bristol paper Completion: July 2018 The Middle of Nowhere illustrates the feeling of unfamiliarity and worry by the expression of the girl wandering through the wild and the way she hugs herself for security. The bugs on the ground symbolize the unknown threat they may hold by their menacing size due to the significance of perspective on the image although they may be harmless. This Illustration symbolizes being in a situation of oblivion and anxiety.
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Critical Investigation Research:
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The style I used was the "Worm's eye view" perspective, which is three-point perspective at a very low angle looking upwards. The other style I intended to use was the drawing style of rendering, which is shading a shape or drawing and using an eraser to create highlights.
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I was inspired to use these techniques for practice and gaining skill in those areas and I believed them to be the best way to express the meaning of my piece. This illustration would have had a different feeling to it if it would have been a different style of drawing or different medium of art.
Contrastblack Studio. "Technical Drawing for Beginners: Three Point Perspective." design.tutsplus, Envato Pty Ltd, 2018, https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/technical-drawing-for-beginners-three-point-perspective--vector-23680.
Fussell, Matt. "Shading Techniques - How to Shade with a Pencil." thevirtualinstructor, TheVirtualInstructor, 2018, https://thevirtualinstructor.com/shading-techniques-basics.html.
Fussell, Matt. "Shading Techniques - How to Shade with a Pencil." thevirtualinstructor, TheVirtualInstructor, 2018, https://thevirtualinstructor.com/shading-techniques-basics.html.
Inspiration:
Developing Skills: When I first starting creating this Illustration, I wanted to ink the entire board after drawing the outlines and maybe even color it if I could. But I decided not to do that.
I would say sketching in pencil is my strongest area in art, but I don't create a lot of drawings. I sketch but hardly ever finish them as a complete drawing. So, I decided to just use graphite and complete the entire Bristol board with value and texture using tools like drawings pencils, blending stumps, and a kneaded eraser. I also looked to draw inspiration from the style of children's book Illustrator, Don Wood, but as I was working on the project I saw how the technique and style of my illustration was veering away from the look of Wood's art. He uses more color and in this project I would not color the Illustration.
I would say sketching in pencil is my strongest area in art, but I don't create a lot of drawings. I sketch but hardly ever finish them as a complete drawing. So, I decided to just use graphite and complete the entire Bristol board with value and texture using tools like drawings pencils, blending stumps, and a kneaded eraser. I also looked to draw inspiration from the style of children's book Illustrator, Don Wood, but as I was working on the project I saw how the technique and style of my illustration was veering away from the look of Wood's art. He uses more color and in this project I would not color the Illustration.
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After researching the artist, Sing Ji, for my Comparative Study, I was inspired by the concept and background art she creates for video games and the narrative quality element of her art.
http://fliphtml5.com/orci/ydfp/basic https://www.illustrationweb.us/artists/SingJi/view https://www.gnomon.edu/about/instructors/sing-ji |
Planning:
At first, I had two separate ideas. I either wanted to create a piece that reflected one's fear and anxiety of the unknown or the same idea I used in my negative illustration about replacing social interactions with modern technology.
1) My first idea consisted of a girl in the center of the page, struggling to understand why the arms around her are all dragging her in different directions all at the same time. The arms are violent and pull on her ears, jaw and hair symbolizing urgency and uncertainty. I also drew littler hands coming from her head and her arms which are supposed to be her own thoughts dragging at her as well. This was meant to symbolize the many choices in our lives, the confusion of which choices to make and points in our lives when we feel doomed.
2) My second sketch was a very rough draft of my final decision of the look and theme of my illustration. At first, the idea of this image was to show something that is practically harmless, like a tiny bug, but making it seem as though it poses a great threat. The person through the grass looks almost as short as the bug due to the perspective. I changed the theme later to combine with my first theme.
3) My third idea links to the theme I had in the Illustrations I created in November of 2017. The theme revolves around screen technology replacing human interaction and memories. In the last sketch I made, it shows three children, two up front seem to be ignoring the third child as they look down at their tablets and wear headphones while the third child in the background looks at them pleadingly holding action figures. Instead of gaining relationship and sharing and playing with others, the children sit, self-absorbed with their tablets.
2) My second sketch was a very rough draft of my final decision of the look and theme of my illustration. At first, the idea of this image was to show something that is practically harmless, like a tiny bug, but making it seem as though it poses a great threat. The person through the grass looks almost as short as the bug due to the perspective. I changed the theme later to combine with my first theme.
3) My third idea links to the theme I had in the Illustrations I created in November of 2017. The theme revolves around screen technology replacing human interaction and memories. In the last sketch I made, it shows three children, two up front seem to be ignoring the third child as they look down at their tablets and wear headphones while the third child in the background looks at them pleadingly holding action figures. Instead of gaining relationship and sharing and playing with others, the children sit, self-absorbed with their tablets.
Process:
Transferring the image: Combining the themes of my first and second sketches and my inspired technique of blending and worm's eye view, I thought of having a girl at a worm's eye view with bugs crawling at the bottom of the page wandering through unfamiliar territory as the bug's pose either a big threat because of their size and their interest in the girl or the false threat they impose due to the perspective compared to how big they'd actually be if the perspective was changed. Their size symbolizes how when someone is unfamiliar with their environment or situation, anything could look like a threat to them.
When I drew the trees of my sketch, the perspective point was off the paper, so I used copy paper and put it above my sketch to continue the line of the tree. Since this drawing is in "worm's eye view" it's basically a three-point perspective drawing.I started off by using a ruler and creating a grid both on the final draft and the Bristol paper. The paper I used was 9 in x 12 in and the Bristol paper was 24 in x 19 in. I drew the sketch onto the Bristol paper by looking at each grid square of the sketch and copying it. I did a very rough draft on the Bristol paper just to get the idea of the girl and bug's proportions. From there, I started to shade in the bug. When I shade in a large area, I hold my pencil horizontally to get more area filled quicker and evenly.
Shading and more detail: I started to shade the trees in by drawing curving strokes upwards on the tree to give it a bark texture, at the same time, I began to shade in the girl, keeping in mind where the sun was in relation to where I should shade darker. I drew more shaded lines under her chin, arms and jeans to create her form. Then, as I progressed, I began to render the drawing by erasing the right sides of the trees to create highlights and form through value. I planned on doing the same for the background, so I shaded the entire background with controlled scribbles.
After that, I started to use the drawing stump. I filled in the bug's features with a striped line design and blended it's entire body using the stump. To make it look realistic according to drawing techniques, I added reflective light coming back at the bug from it's shadow, which is not visible on the paper, and back onto it's belly. I used a kneaded eraser to
Girl reading Palm, Oil on Canvas, 1921.
https://www.wikiart.org/en/norman-rockwell/girl-reading-palm-1921 |
Facial features + background: At this stage of the process, I began to focus on the girl's expression. I drew her face but I didn't think the message of uncertainty and anxiety got through along with it. So, I redrew her face, using a small mirror to look at my own face as a reference. I gave her face more dramatic values along her cheekbone and under her eyes and above her eyebrows. I wanted her expression to really set the mood for the emotion the whole piece was trying to portray. I thought of Norman Rockwell's Illustrations and how he uses facial expressions to show the mood and emotion of the characters.
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From there, I began to add more trees in the background of the forest and also the outline of the mountain to the right in the background. I tried many techniques on how to make realistic branches and the one I used for this illustration was loosely holding my pencil and dragging it in the direction I was the branch while slightly moving it to make texture. After I had down that, I began to fill in and shade the branches according to where the sun would be and added leaves to the tinier branches. The leaves were very difficult for me to draw, I was very impatient and did not finish the whole forest. But in doing so, it have the forest a dead sort of look to it. As I was doing this. I finished the other bug to making it look identical to the first bug, then moving on to draw the ridges in the mountain.
The mountain gave me a lot of trouble too. I would draw and shade the ridges but it didn't seem to look exactly correct. After looking at some reference pictures of mountains and ridges, I realized I wasn't using dark enough values and so I went back into my drawing and added very dark shadows to some of the ridges. When I shaded the mountain in, I would use my stump in an up and down motion on the narrow side for my most realistic look without a lot of pencil strokes showing. For the rocks at the bottom of the mountain, I took some rocks from outside and drew them like still life drawing onto the Bristol board. When shading the rocks, I circled my stump around the outlines I made for the rock and then dabbed my kneaded eraser on them in the direction of the sun.
Reflection:
As I look at the product of my work, I wish I would've taken more time to make sure everything looked correct in the perspective I used. The mountains in the background to the right look very flat from the ground up. I should've taken more time drawing the lines up to the perspective point in order for it to look unified.
I really enjoyed creating this Illustration. Drawing is my favorite medium of art so far and the medium of art I'm the most skilled at. I love creating the landscape and using my creativity to make a world the drawing resides in. I pulled inspiration for the landscape from the land formation of "Bear Lodge" or "Devil's Tower" in Wyoming which has similar features. |
When it came to blending, I would accidentally rub some graphite with my hand or touch the paper with my fingers so there are splotches where I did that which made it hard to blend or erase in those areas. This project really helped me improve my skills of perspective drawings and drawing people, trees and bugs. If I were to do this again, I'd take more time finishing up an area before moving on to the next; I'd have more patience with the way it looks and how I can fix it.
ACT Questions:
1. Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork.
The value of all of the objects and the girl in my piece show how my inspiration helped me make them realistic and express a feeling.
2. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author explained how to make drawings look realistic and logical using tools.
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
People
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
5. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
The value of all of the objects and the girl in my piece show how my inspiration helped me make them realistic and express a feeling.
2. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author explained how to make drawings look realistic and logical using tools.
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
People
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
5. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?