Charcoal

Charcoal is something that is not actually that bad. Life drawing was fun yesterday because of 10 second poses and awkward hand drawings.

I also handed over my first commission this week! Let me know if you have any ideas.

Royal Festival Hall

Yesterday we did drawing at Royal Festival Hall (they have nice food also). This is a drawing that I enjoyed doing there.

Ercol

I can't stop looking at Ercol furniture on eBay I've been eyeing up a desk set. It's probably because of the set of design lectures that we're on at the minute (Festival of Britain etc) which is throwing me into 1950s design again. 

All images taken from the 1956 Ercol catalogue 

Stamps

 

  

 From yesterday's rubber stamp workshop.

Me and Ani make a pro team.

Brave New World

Images for 'Brave New World' brief which was our first 'proper' project linked with House of Illustration x Folio Society competition. I'm pretty pleased with how they've turned out although obviously my Photoshop skills are pretty much non-existent. It was nice to be able to draw freely and also to come up with an idea that wasn't such an obvious take on the novel. 

I don't really have anything to post about so here is a glove that was adult sized last year.

Location Drawing 3: Natural History

For Friday's location drawing session, we were told to choose our own place of interest. I didn't want to go to somewhere that I already knew I liked drawing in, rather the opposite. After a previously disastrous drawing trip to the Natural History Museum, I decided to go there after Viv had already decided to go there to finish up her self-directed project, specifically for the fish/ sea life sections. This led me to look at a subject that has previously not crossed my mind which made it a lot easier to actually look at what I was drawing. Not everything was successful but I'm pleased with the sketchbook as a whole. Now I'm just desperately worried about life drawing and animation this week! 

Location Drawing 2

Last week's location was Borough Market, I've been before but it was great to look at it from the perspective of needing to draw things. Here are (some of) more successful pages from the day, I'm most pleased with the first and last pages featured below. Hand bound sketchbooks are great for drawing in locations where you aren't quite sure what you're going to want to include and offer a more flexible drawing space than my usual A3 Seawhite sketchbooks. I forgot how fun layered drawings are so I'll definitely be stocking up on tracing paper ready for next week.

Modern Publicity 39, 1969-70

'Modern Publicity' is a series that I came across recently in the university library. It chronicles a selection of 'the best' packaging, posters, trademarks, television titles etc from across the globe in a given year. I randomly picked out the 1969-70 edition to see what it contained and was pleasantly surprised. Many of the designs and layouts still feel very modern and there is an overall feeling of freshness to each image. Below are a few of my favourite bits from the book, I'll definitely be looking at more issues when I've finally worked my way through the massive pile of books that I brought with me and have not quite started reading yet.

Location Drawing 1

Some (very badly photographed) drawings from the British Museum on Friday. I've missed location drawing and it was nice to not have a specific time frame to work within. 

Some Work

Portrait of Viv from fancy dress life drawing on Wednesday

A small selection of things that I've done this week, none are particularly good but it's not a bad start. I really need to have more conviction with line and not rely on oil pastels and a chisel posca because although they feel right at the moment, my drawing is not really improving. I really enjoyed the films that we watched in the Thursday "Secret Cinema" drawing session (Virgil Widrich's 'Copy Shop' (2001) was particularly impressive) although I struggled to draw super quickly especially when challenged with a longer and very narrow piece of paper. On Monday I'll have to get photos of the rest of what I've done so far as there's no point in doing the work unless I can easily track what is and isn't working, practicing drawing hands is a biggie for me at the moment, just look at the bottom image and you'll see what I mean.

Drawing from 'The Girl Chewing Gum' directed by John Smith in 1976

Drawing from Viv posing pre-costume on Wednesday

Tsunami Appeal at Designers Block Opening

3 of 6 Screen Printed Cards by Benjamin Phillips and Soju Tanaka

Some things that I picked up as part of a 7 for £5 super deal (in addition to the two issues of Okido). I'm struggling to find who the two prints are by but I will have another look soon. I particularly like the above postcards, the contrast in drawing technique works excellently.

Benjamin Phillips Postcard

Soju Tanaka Zine (and business cards)