GRAPHICS AND CREATIVE THINKING

WEEK 5 DAY 1

Using a media we would not usually use we drew the ear of someone sitting nearby. I chose charcoal and after the time limit for the task the whole class placed all works together on the floor in order to see how others had gone about the task.

I drew my friend Matt's ear which is one left from bottom right. I found charcoal easy to manipulate in order to generate tone although it was messy.

It is clear that the most striking ears are the ones done in another colour or where a pitch black tone contrasts against a near white tone.

Another task involved experimental face drawings; (from top left going clockwise), 1) Using biro whilst blind I attempted to draw a friend. 2) Using permanent marker and without this pen leaving the page I attempted to do a self portrait from memory. 3) Using charcoal and my weaker hand. 4) Using ink pen and drawing with my mouth. 

I thought drawing using my mouth was a very off the wall approach to portraiture and surprisingly I am actually quite pleased with my final outcome with its jittering lines but I think I like its simplicity and accuracy in scale.

This is a bit of a mess when you consider that it was supposed to be the face of the person sitting opposite me however, if you look more closely you can see recognisable parts of the face scattered around; for example the hairline is very distinctive.

The next task involved collage where again thinking out of the box we had to create a face using cut outs and various face parts from different people/ animals within magazines.

Using a viewfinder we had to select a square of our piece that we thought was most interesting. I liked the lion nose and whiskers combined with Keira Knightly's lips smoking a cigarette with Sir Patrick Stewarts (AKA Professor X from the X-men) wrinkly neck.

I started another drawing but increasing the scale of the chosen square. The reason for increasing the scale is because a lot of graphic design involves working at a large scale where any finished product can either be further increased or suitably decreased in scale.

REFLECTION

I found todays tasks very eye opening in that I really began to appreciate how thinking out of the box can aid a graphic designer in discovering the new and original. The drawings I made weren't the strongest however I feel fairly confident in my ability to accurately represent form through various medias now; trying charcoal is something I rarely do and I found it to be a method very capable of attaining great toning with ease. Even at this early stage I am very interested in the graphic pathway so I need to really put full effort into all upcoming tasks and research the topic to look for further inspiration. If I could pick a weakness from my work today I would say that I could improve by working at a much faster pace, simply practising this will improve my accuracy whilst working at speed.

 

Images: Authors own.

 

CHC