OUIL404 Visual Language Introductory Briefing - Sketchbooks

This briefing was largely to kick off our Visual Language module, Looking at our sketchbooks and how we can improve our relationship with them in order to better our practice as artists.

After our presentation, we were asked to draw anything of interest to us, whilst Matt came round and gave us a brief individual tutorial in order to determine what exactly It was we could improve on.

I chose to elaborate on a short comic I'd drawn in my sketchbook about a fox and a rabbit couple, Looking at the dynamics and the problems that face unconventional or socially unacceptable couples day-to-day. Most of these were done using a mix of sharpie and Crayola markers. I really like the bold, bright colours you get from water soluble markers but I often have trouble using them under my standard line work as they tend to bleed and go all nasty, which is what ended up happening when I was experimenting with a two-tone colour technique in some fox studies above. I found that by using the permenant sharpies, you can avoid the icky colour bleed and keep the lines nice and crisp too. I'll probably test this with ink and brush as well at some point.

Talking to Matt was particularly enlightening as it helped put in to perspective some routes I could go down with my work. I have a real passion and zest for character - not even consciously. Recently, i've been trying to step away from obsessive character creation and started to move into looking at whole scenes - especially at how you can use multiple elements in those scenes to communicate things. 

Matt disagreed that I needed to necessarily 'step back' from my love of characters, but to continue developing the more observational sketches I often do out and about. Little of my final pieces quite manage to hit the same notes that my sketchbooks do, which is often due to lack of planning and poor time management - something i'm aiming to nip in the bud as I start doing more work on this course. My sketchbooks on the other hand are a constant work in progress. I am constantly drawing and constantly observing, and usually if i'm not something has gone gravely wrong. My aim is to channel this constant need to draw and communicate through my sketches into the rest of my work, both through my attention to detail and also in my organisation and structure too. Hopefully, by acchieving this, I'll be well on my way to producing successful work throughout level 4 on this course.