The Setting of my Comic

I had to think about the setting of my comic. At first I made list of interesting places for a zombie apocalypse, such as carnival, haunted house, big city, amusement park, graveyard, cowboy town, movie theater, zoo, uni building, etc. It depended on how I wanted the tone of the story to come across because I think they are all fun and gimmicky (possibly locations for other spin off stories), but I wanted the story to be more relatable. So, I thought that the easiest and most relatable place would be where I live right now, as I would be able to take reference pictures myself and work from my experience. So I decided that I would take my camera with me to the Eldon building and on the walk I would take pictures I could use to draw my comic. 

I wanted my main character to have set up bunker in my current house so that I could use our living room and the view to the street outside. The street I live on is very much a student housing street and I just thought that it would probably be the worst place to be in a zombie apocalypse (because students are known for spreading illnesses).

Reference Drawing for Practice

Me and Jade have been using the website LineofAction to practice drawing people, animals and landscapes. We do a mixture of 2 minutes, 5 minutes and 10 minutes drawings, but I prefer the shorter ones as I love drawing fast. 

Also, for one of the Illustration society sessions we set up a movie (Godzilla vs Hedorah) and paused it every few minutes so that people could draw from the movie. This was an interesting very to look at compositions as movies tend to always set up the shots using composition rules (rule of thirds.. etc). 

Group Tutorial 6th Nov

 In this group tutorial we discussed my projects theme and what the comic could be about. The main idea was that it would be about the feeling of being 'othered' and different from everyone else. I plan to show this by either the main character being a zombie and everyone else being a human or the other way round. I am still unsure. 

We also talked about doing more observational drawing, but of people I don't know and places that are full of characters (e.i the pub, a bingo hall etc). Maybe drawing everyone as a zombie as well. 

And Ceri also recommended that I watch The Mighty Boosh. Which I did and it was AMAZING!!!

More Life Drawing with Trudy Barber

 WARNING NUDITY!

So for this life drawing session there was a life model (a man). We started with quick 5 minute drawings and my weapon of choice (for the whole session) was charcoal, as it is quick and expressive. We then went on to longer drawings and even did some drawings of the model walking around the room, which I have never done before. It was challenging but also very useful and beneficial to my drawing skills. 

Running a Workshop in a Seminar

As I am interested in teaching college level students after university, I was given the opportunity to run a workshop in one of Simons first year seminars (Simonar if you will). It was a seminar on artist statements, so I had to come up with a little workshop that could be useful to them when they are creating there statements. 

So, I looked at the list of information they needed to include in the statement and designed a task that would allow them to draw the list out, while also being able to draw a 'profile picture' that they could maybe use on there cv.

So I drew my own example that consisted of a Adam's Family style portrait in the middle, a nameplate underneath and object that I like/hobbies and stuff that answers the questions they are asked. Using this as my starting point I showed it to Simon and explained the task, he seemed to like it so I created a slide with all the information (so that it could stay up for the whole workshop if people forgot). 

It was very fun and everyone seemed to respond well to the task. I tried to go around and talk to them, but social anxiety was getting the better of me. Hopefully I'll have more opportunities to run workshops in the future. 

Foiling Workshop

Ros ran a foiling workshop, so that we could test out the foiling machine with previous work we have made or create something new while in the workshop. The foiling machine is a bit intimidating but it is actually quite easy to use. The premise is that you work in black and white, photocopy your work so that there is toner in the black, and then anywhere there is toner the foil will stick too. If you only want foil on certain parts of the artwork then you need to print two and cut out the part that you want the foil, place the one with cut out on top of the other and then put it to the foiler. 

Although I am not too interested in using the foiling machine in my work, the results were really pretty and is affective when used in small amounts (for highlights). I especially LOVE the foil on the text!!!

Life Drawing with Trudy Barber

 On Wednesdays there is life drawing sessions run by Trudy Barber. She is an observational artist, mainly working on portraits and the figure. This first session was a warm up to see how we all worked while drawing a subject in the middle of the room, Trudy had set up a big tree branch and a pot with flowers, which was not really the most exciting thing to draw but it was definitely challenging. We also ended the session by drawing the person next to us (which was Helena for me) and that was pretty fun. 

Personally I used charcoal to do my drawing because I find it very fun and quick to put down on the paper. I am quite well versed in life drawing as I did it a lot in college, so basically I was reliving those years and gaining those skills back. 

Next week will be a life model, so that will be more useful for my project.