Studying George Hammond Steel

We were given a style, character, setting and a genre of show to create a story from to pitch.

While designing the story, we are meant to research each one we were given.

For my style I got St. Ives School and from doing my research on the different artists that came out of St.Ives school I found George Hammond Steel.

(One of his paintings based on the Cornish seaside)

(My digital study of his style and layering)

Drawing with your gut, not your brain

                               I found myself becoming a lot more gentle with my lines this session.

It was very hard and at the end I was quite worn out but I felt like I learnt a lot of knew things.                            

I learnt about how it is natural, through observation of art and other people's work around us, to end up reflecting those styles in our life drawing. Especially as students.

I was told that I had been subtly drawing in a rather graphic-type of style.

Looking back at my old work I can definitely see what he means.

Men just seemed to look like generic men and the female models kind of looked like generic women.

I was told that to be a good observer you must almost let go of any influences from outside and focus on what in front of you.

Draw the model for who she or he is. 

Also draw honestly.

Don't draw what you don't see. If there is not difference in the tone then there is none.

Matt Nava

I found his blog!!

http://www.mattnava.com/

I've been following his work since Journey's concept art was released and using a lot of his drawings to learn about compositions.

Story boarding and library adventures

On our Monday back we were given an assignment right away called the 'Rush Job'. To put it simply, it was a group project to create an animatic of an advertisement for a fake company. 

To be done by Thursday.

So once again story boarding remind me of its wonderful existence and I say that without a hint of sarcasm. I absolutely love story boarding. Don't get me wrong I am not good at it (yet??) but I love the world it opens up. It's a great challenge for me to make a good storyboard as I've always wanted to be a great story teller but was never really good at telling them verbally or reading out loud. So that's probably why I'm so drawn to story boarding cause its telling a great story well through drawings. For the project I wasn't really in charge of story boarding but still it set something off in me again to find more about it. Hence my adventure in the library. 

After getting a little lost trying to figure out the library computer system and working my way around the maze of bookshelves, I found a couple really good books about the history of story boarding. I also found more that focuses more on techniques and on what it takes to be a good story boarder. There is one called Directing the Story written by Francis Glebas which I have yet to book out and read but looks really interesting. It talks a lot about how to direct the viewer's eye and convey meanings with images which we haven't learnt about yet in detail on the course so it would be nice to find out something new.

Wish me luck!

Olivia Healy

I thought I should show some of her work so you could understand where my obsession with raw primary colours this summer came from.
The artist was an illustration student at Falmouth University.
I came across her work during the third year final exhibition this summer and fell in love.
I was itching to experiment with colours too after.

So much emotion is such simple shapes.

Just imagine it animated!

I just love the vibrant and liveliness the colour brings, especially when presented in a very minimalist yet carefully observed form.

Love her work!

If you have Instagram I highly recommended following her work and experiments.

They will brighten up your day and inspire you to think differently.

Studying & imitating

I tried my best with the paints I had and a piece of cardboard.

I could have possibly done it digitally but I thought to understand MacKenzie's style I had to try it out with a similar medium.

Orange tones and yellow glow

Playing around with gouache again.

I have been really inspired by a lot of artist on Instagram and around Falmouth, like Bobby Pontillas (Animator & designer at Disney) and Olivia Healy (Illustration student).

My fascination with primary colours doesn't look like it's ending anytime soon.