Reasoning: An in-class task, starting off with experimentation with different drawing mediums.

 

Inspiration + Technique: This is an appropriate way to start off this project -- seeing which drawing mediums work for me and making observations regarding the different aesthetic different drawing utensils grant to a drawn object. Through time, this variation of medium (and more) will be used to portray different images.

 

 

Reasoning + Inspiration: Inspired by the quote "Time is like a handful of sand," and its imagery.

 

Technique: Traditional drawing.

Process: Graphic liner line art and tonal values achieved with a mechanical pencil. I took a picture of my own hand as the model again with my laptop's camera.

Reflection: Graphic liner is excellent at making bold, loud lines, but it's difficult to control on its own. When I use it again, I'll have to do a sketch in pencil first before going over in pen and erasing the pencil because the lines here aren't as sure as they could be (which is why some of the fingers look awkward in their shape). I initially wanted to make this purely an ink drawing but I felt it lacked depth and I know already (from day 1's drawing) that I personally don't like the aesthetic of graphic liner shading. I opted to shade with mechanical pencil since it's precise but also allows for gradual tonal variation, since I wanted to create soft shadows around the image. It achieved this gradation, ensuring that the eye's focus wouldn't stray from the bold lines of the main subject. 

Reasoning: Portraying time through the growth of nature.

 

Inspiration: Flowers outside and thinking about the time lapse of their blooming.

Technique: Traditional painting and drawing.

Process: Light sketch of flowers with a mechanical pencil, then laying down base colours with watercolour paint and then another layer in some areas to give them depth. Then finally, I went over with mechanical pencil again to outline the petals and shade with lines to add more dimension and detail.

Reflection: Using pencil was appropriate to go over the flowers since it's not as harsh as the black ink of graphic liner. Graphite is sheerer than ink, so it was cohesive with the flowers' soft aesthetic. I didn't use a reference for this drawing -- although this flower is no specific type because of this, I found it surprisingly freeing to not rely on a model. I know that flower petals open out from a central point like an explosion, and that's all I thought about when painting them.

Reasoning: The passing of time has gone -- the future is already here. It is us.

Inspiration: Technology's rapid advancement, and 'Terminator'-esque ideas of machines taking over human life.

Technique: Traditional drawing.

Process: Used a reference picture of a portrait and altered the facial features to suit my idea: half human, half machine. Drawn entirely with mechanical pencil, I started with a light sketch and gradually filled in the details of the face, hair and metallic components. 

Reflection: To view this drawing, close one eye and cover either half of the face: on the left is a smiling person, and on the right is an emotionless, steely machine. As a whole, the half-and-half contrast of this portrait is effective in portraying the idea of an quick passage of time, signifying the speedy pace of technology's progress. I also intended for the drawing to serve as commentary regarding how technology is a part of us; consuming us like the machine metal and barcode (symbol of materialism) are doing to this person's face. I kept shading rough around the face to draw less attention outside of the facial area -- but this wasn't really a main focus since human portraits inherently draw the eye to the face first. I also made use of different types of lines to portray each side: soft for humanity, sharp and angular for machine.

Reasoning: Time breaks everything down.

Inspiration: Grandfather clocks, their antiquity and therefore their age. I 'broke' the clock face to further emphasise the passage of time.

Technique: Traditional drawing.

Process: I searched up grandfather clock faces and observed common features: ornate appearance, clock numbers often were made up of Roman numerals, monochrome/metallic. I was inspired by all these features and designed my own clock face. I started with a light sketch and gradually went over darker with my pencil and filled in details.

Reflection: I drew this freehand because I usually don't like using measuring instruments like rulers or compasses. Because I'm portraying time's course of decay, there is leeway for imperfections. I personally like the faults of this drawing: how the circles aren't perfect and how the numbers aren't perfectly aligned. That being said, I still used freehand measuring techniques to gage where things were meant to be whilst doing the sketch (like drawing a light circle and sectioning it like a pizza to work out where the clock numbers should've been situatted). Freehand is difficult too, however, because I often found myself struggling to fit in details I did on one side, and then found I couldn't do the same to the other because I had drawn circles/details too big or small. If I were to do this again, I would compromise and make use of a ruler to make my alignments more accurate, and therefore fit details in symmetrically. But I wouldn't use a compass because, there are a lot of circles that make up this drawing, and I feel the compass would be doing my work for me, rather than letting me practice my own technique.

Reasoning: Seasons are an endless cycle, signifying the constancy of time.

Inspiration: The four seasons and cycle diagrams (i.e. as of animal/plant growth stages)

Technique: Traditional painting and drawing.

Process: Using watercolour paints, I gave each seasonal symbol their colour washes and another layer of details. I used colour pencils and graphite afterwards to add more tone and dimension to them as well since watercolour washes alone washed the image out and therefore no focus was established in the image. I found colour harmony difficult since I didn't plan a colour scheme beforehand, and I instead coloured each element as they would be alone. I ended up with analogous elements with the exception of the bright autumn leaf, which was a brilliant orange in contrast to the other elements' blue and purples. After importing it into Photoshop, I chose to colour correct the image, especially the leaf, so that the whole image's colour would pull together.

Reflection: Watercolour is a hard medium to control. Whilst I wanted colours to bleed into one another, there were several occasions throughout drawing this where the colours bled over where I didn't want them to. Overall, I ended up liking this 'messy' aesthetic and find it organic, which suits the theme of seasons and time. Previously, I mentioned that colour harmonisation was a problem for me, so next time I work with watercolour, it is best to establish a colour palette first. Aside from it being more aesthetically pleasing, I wanted this image to be analagous in colour to pull each element together into one unit -- this is to represent that they are all a part of the year, yet are still different, which is further portrayed by how each seasonal symbol 'bleeds' into the next.

Reasoning: After some time and great care of your Charmander, it will evolve into a stronger Charizard!

Inspiration: My Pokemon Nanoblock figurines, and the first in-class sketching activity of the semester.

Technique: Traditional drawing and colouring.

Process: I started lightly sketching with coloured pencil this time, instead of using graphite. I coloured in lightly with the same coloured pencils so I could still see my line art. Because the figurines were fairly detailed, it was getting difficult to differentiate the different planes of each part, so I opted to go over my lines with a thin graphic liner. 

Reflection: I did originally want this to be entirely done in coloured pencil, but it didn't work out as the overall image seemed too washed out -- as was pure watercolour from yesterday. Even darker coloured pencils didn't seem to layer on easily on top of lighter coloured pencils, and they weren't sharp enough to make the drawings look relatively clean. Graphic liner was initially too 'risky' for me to use (as seen on day one), but it was much easier to use this time as a lighter line art was already established beforehand. 

Process/Reflection: My group and I took random portraits of each other with a DSLR around an area on campus. I selected the ones that looked best and imported them into Photoshop. For this photograph, I altered the colour balance of the image and manually selected some areas so that the overall colour palette was harmonious (since there were places that were red, complimentary to green and therefore stood out, and distracted the eye). The face wasn't lit well enough, even after I played around with curves of the whole image so I manually selected the face as well (with the selection tool) and altered the curves of just the face. I also filled another selection of the face with white and set it to overlay with a low opacity just to brighten the face more and pull more focus into it. The wheel in the bottom right was also further to the right initially as the image was longer horizontally, but I moved it more to the left and partly behind the portrait subject because the space between the subject and the wheel originally 'broke' the image as they were separate. With moving the wheel to where it is now, it looks more cohesive, and its yellow with the yellow on the subject's left side also frames the subject well.