Drawing for Illustration Out and About

Drawing for Illustration 

Perspective Drawings and Establishing Shots

During the induction week I push forward the message to first year (Level 4) students that the comic artist mantra has to be 'Draw Draw Draw!'
So what can we at university level do differently to get across the ideas we want the students to communicate in their work. A lot of the students know about the basics of a comic and how it is constructed, but they come from an education where the word is more important then the image. But inst it also true that 1 image can speak a thousand words, and communicate more effectively and efficiently to a wider and broader audience in a shorter amount of time?

Anyway, that's not the point of this blog. The point of this blog is to get you to realise how we can improve our drawing techniques by adding a bit of realisation to our briefs and encouraging the students to explore the larger world with their pens and pencils, rather than them hiding behind their mobile phones. 

The project above was to get the students to explore perspective. This used to be a day at the train station. But this year we thought differently and slightly out of the box and encouraged the students to take to the roof in the Flaxman and capture a scene from there. 

What we were after in this brief is to get the students to realise the power of the opening shot to help the reader to locate where the story is happening. Above is a drawing by one of the students Tom Newall taken while on the roof of the Flaxman. 

Above Mike Walters opening page with establishing shot and then the reader is lead into a location to demonstrate where the action is about to take place. 

Drawing at Stoke Railway station 

Drawing outside the Mellor Building at Staffordshire University 

drawing around the University 

Perspective in action 

Jason gets down to understand perspective by starting off low down and looking up

New and Old technologies working together to make art

New and old Art

Last Friday, we tried something we've never done before on Cartoon & Comic Arts. That was introducing the students to a 3D programme called Mudbox by Autodesk. A vast amount of the students on the award have never used Photoshop let alone a 3d package. But undeterred by this we attempted to do it anyway. 

The aim is to get them to do something traditional and then incorporate new technologies to show them how it can help to improve their work.

Obviously some of them to to it like ducks to water - others it was a little harder. 

Portrait Drawing 

The other thing we did was to do portrait drawings, unfortunately I sprained my hand the other evening, which made the whole teaching task very hard. But I think I got the message over. 

More importantly, it was an opportunity for the students to do the Cartoon & Comic Arts Mantra - Draw....Draw.... Draw. 

The Idea is to get the students to build on their core skills that were developed in the first semester. Where we encouraged them to design characters then to build the models out of Plasticine.

From the images below you'll see that some of them aren't that bad an artist. 

This time we are going ask them to try and model their portraits using the 3d Software.

 

 

Now we quickly realised that between the drawing and the 3d modelling there is potentially a lot that can go wrong. But education at this level you don't always get the answer you expect. It is about taking the students out of their comfort zone and pushing them. So in the next few weeks it will be interesting to see what develops. 

 


It's already interesting to note that the students who haven't done any art foundation are the stubborn ones who wont push themselves. And see any