freya's art blog

Welcome to my blog! Here I post all of my artwork related to my art foundation year which I am studying from 2021 - 2022. Stick around to follow my projects and ideas!

[blogbyfreyr]

REBELLION: BRUSHES, BANNERS AND BABIES

One of my ideas following the idea of childhood rebellion was to create a mock-up of a protest. I decided that I wanted to try and create some fake banners/signs.

First of all, I decided to experiment with some different brush textures on my digital software. I wanted a brush that replicated the texture of a crayon whilst also retaining some structure.

I went through several brushes, and settled on five that I was happy with. I enjoyed 'Spectra' as it was very nice for blending and was a smooth looking brush, however it acted more like paint and was difficult to create form with. 'Stucco' I also felt the same about, however this time I preferred the texture as it felt like paper grain. 'Bardot Messy Scribble' was my favourite for colouring, as it already had the texture of scribbles and was very easy to fill big areas - but I was looking for a brush that would help me with lines. 'RSCO Toothy Marker' was very similar to 'Spectra'.

I decided that my favourite brush was 'Nikko Rull', as it had a nice square form whilst also having the correct texture that I was looking for. I did some colour swatches for it and decided that it would provide the correct design.

Once I had settled on the brush I wanted to use, I found a blank PNG of a banner on google to start sketching out drafts for some protest designs. On my second mindmap, I illustrated a baby crying as a quick doodle and I like how it turned out so I decided to try and replicate it onto a banner. First I tried using just lines with some bold primary colours, but I decided it wasn't bold enough and added more colour and texture. I chose for the main two colours to be pink and blue, replicating the colour scheme that I found during my research into Melanie Martinez. I enjoyed how this came out a lot more and I think that it provides for a striking banner - even if it is a simple face.

My second banner design I wanted to incorporate text, however I felt that as it were small children creating these banners, I wanted to recreate the handwriting and spelling as such. I really like the dishevelled but simplistic look to this banner and I'm considering making another font in the future to replicate the basic handwriting.

After I created these banners, I wanted to take the charicature of the baby a step further, and created some simple designs of this baby in different emotions and styles. I really enjoyed the look of these and how they all fit together, and I'm thinking of refining the character design some more. I especially enjoy the last one I did in the bottom right, as I based it somewhat off of some punk subcultures with the style of makeup and the punk deathhawk hairstyle. I would like to do some more research into these subcultures and see how it fits in with my theme of childhood rebellion, as I think that there is a big crossover between the two and I enjoy the exaggerated expressions and looks of these children.

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REBELLION: MELANIE MARTINEZ RESEARCH + BALLOONS

During an analysis, it was suggested that I do a bit of research into the singer Melanie Martinez. Personally, I have not listened to many of her songs, but the general style of her music videos and products are childlike and use a lot of bright pastel colours. I decided to go into more depth and look at the designs of her album covers. One that stood out to me was her 'Crybaby' album cover, that uses a lot of pinks and blues to contrast each other nicely. On the cover, the font of the title is in balloon lettering, something I found to be quite interesting. I like the childlike aspect of the birthday balloons, and I think I want to explore this typography more. I also enjoy the use of this collaging effect, making the layers of the cover stand out individually. After looking into her songs a bit more, I realised that she uses the guise of childlike colours and objects to almost disguise the harsh and dark messages behind the lyrics. She talks about serious topics such as child abuse and sexual assualt, all whilst portraying the message through metaphors in her videos.

I also did a little bit of research into her branded products. She has released a perfume that comes in a baby milk bottle with the same blue and pink colour scheme. I like the contrast of the immature theming of a perfume for a more mature audience. She has also released a colouring book, which follows the character of 'Crybaby'. This book, although brightly coloured and cutesy, has a parental advisory warning for explicit content.

I wanted to try and create an alphabet similar to the font used in the album cover, but as my only reference was the album cover (which had a limited supply of letters), I struggled to recreate the texture of the balloons. I started by adding blocks of colours to represent the shadows and highlights of the balloon, as it is a highly reflective surface. After tweaking it a little bit, I realised that I wasn't getting very far with making it look more realistic, so I decided to scrap this idea and find an accurate reference to draw from.

I decided that the best course of action was to find and inflate my own balloons so that I could take photos from many different angles and see how the reflection behaved in different environments.

I picked up the letters F and U, as I felt that it was an amusing censorship of Fuck You, and I only wanted a few letters for reference. I took a bunch of photos from different angles, making sure to get close-ups of the light in the metallic reflection. I thought it was interesting how the creases in the balloons warped the colours around it, and I wanted to try and recreate this.

I decided to try and draw the lettering digitally, using an image that I had taken as a reference. I took colours from the original photo and left bold marks to represent the shadows and light from the surrounding environment. I decided to make the background a similar colour to the one in the image as I wanted the lettering to have the same context to create that added sense of realism. I didn't want the marks to have any soft edges, as I feel like it would have caused the piece to lose the metallic feel and not make it stand out as much. I eventually did not finish this, however I would like to try again at recreating the reflections and perhaps using a different medium (such as charcoal) to create it next time.

[blogbyfreyr]

REBELLION PROJECT

For this brief, we were given a period of time to create a response to the idea of 'rebellious ideology'. It was suggested that we think about our own experiences and how there may be things that we feel especially rebellious about. To start this process, we brainstormed ideas that we wanted to go into and created a mindmap (in our own choice of medium) to help display and focus on specific ideas.

I settled on the idea of 'Childhood Rebellion'. In more detail, my concept was to address petty issues that children have, but presenting them in a more serious light. I wanted to create a mock-up of a protest and create protesting signs and banners that portray issues that small children would have. Examples of this would be bad grades, bedtime curfews, sitting on the 'naughty step' etc.

After I had settled on this idea, I created another mindmap but this time included a lot more visual elements that would contribute to my process. I took images with bright neon colours that were incredibly oversaturated and of objects from my own childhood that bring back a feeling of nostalgia. This helped me understand the direction that I wanted to go with my project, as I presented my ideas to the class and I received helpful feedback that inspired my future work in this project.

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OBSERVATION PROJECT IDEA:

For this project, I want to incorporate Sophie Calle's ideas of peeping into strangers lives in a more specific way. I thought it would be interesting to almost observe someone else's life and create a display that showcases what I've noticed or seen.

The subject that I chose for this project was @fyrelegend, who agreed to let me take photos of him and his daily life.

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DIGITAL PAINTINGS:

I did some digital art pieces using a scratchy brush to give texture. I wanted some anonymity to the sketches, so I left the facial features out.

This was done before this post and inspired my next gouache paintings.

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GOUACHE PAINTINGS #2:

For this project, I decided that instead of focusing on a whole image, I would pick out and zoom into the hands. I feel as though hands are a wonderful form of expression, and I wanted to show that through how he interacts with certain objects.

I wanted to create a series of 3 paintings, almost like a triptych, that showed aspects of Ewan's everyday life. Taking inspiration from Sophie Calle and her work with 'invading people's personal belongings' I got Ewan to hold up some of the items that were around his bedroom - specifically a Lego brick and his cologne. I liked these images, as the hands were in very dynamic poses and the items related to his hobbies (Lego) and the senses (how he smells).

I began by sketching out the reference image and then went in with large blocks of colour with a flat paintbrush.

I chose yellow and blue, as they are two of his favourite colours and I wanted to incorporate that somehow in. This time, instead of bright and random colours, the pieces all had more in common with each other and actually had focal points.

Once they had dried, I went in with a white paint pen and highlighted the bits i felt needed more dimension.

I did these paintings with gouache.

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GOUACHE PAINTING #1

For this painting, I wanted to use an image of @fyrelegend doing something that he does a lot - play Genshin Impact (a mobile game).

I liked this photo because it's such a mundane action, however it holds a lot of meaning in his daily life, therefore it is important to my project.

I wanted to try and incorporate bright colours into this, as I had the idea to almost have it through a lense of fantasy, as though I'm dreaming about him.

I started with the darker tones of the skin in blue, and then added more and more eccentric colours that completely contrasted each other.

I wasn't a fan of the final result as I think the colours are too bright and there is no specific focal point because of that. I also felt as though the bright colours (whilst a good idea in theory) didn't really go with the rest of my project - which is slightly gritty in theme. I still will include this in my final presentation, however I won't be doing anymore pieces like this.

I used gouache paints for this.

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FINAL LIFE DRAWING #2:

For this piece, we used methods that we had learnt from this post and incorporated that into the process.

First we started off by picking any image of our choice and drew a simple 3 x 2 grid on top. This was to help with proportions and to make sure all of the body parts were in the correct pose in accordance to one another. Then, we took what we learnt from this post and drew a simple skeleton on top. This was how we began the drawing process.

After everything had been mapped out, we put up some A1 paper on the wall and began mapping out all of the most important points (that we had already mapped out on the reference). This really helped me with the pose, as I chose one that was rather complicated and had a lot of odd proportions.

Once that was all in place, I began to add different tones - starting with the legs and working down. If I were to do another realistic drawing like this I would probably start with the darkest tones instead. This is because I found that I started with quite dark shadows on places that weren't as dark as the rest - meaning that I had to put a lot of effort into making other parts look darker e.g the hair.

I drew the basic sketch with a hb pencil and then used a 2B pencil to add tone.

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FINAL LIFE DRAWING #1:

Here is piece #1 out of 2 for my human pose project. Here, we drew one of our classmates, Adam, from life. He sat in the middle of the room whilst we all assembled ourselves in a circle around him.

To begin with I started mapping out where all of Adam's furthest extremities were with brisk, light strokes. This gave me a quick and easy guideline to follow, which helped with anatomy! I began with the general silhouette lines, whilst also choosing to emphasise the important details such as his shirt or facial features. After that, I went in with bold hatched lines to add a variation in the tone, which is possibly my favourite part of this piece.

Next time, I think I need to take a step back from my canvas and get a general idea of what I'm drawing, as the proportions of some of the body parts are slightly unnatural (the front thigh is too long etc.).

We drew these pieces on A1 with charcoal!

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DRAWING LIFE... ON THE MOVE.

For these drawings we were tasked to draw people around us.

For the first three I sat in a McDonalds and drew the customers around me. I actually enjoyed doing this as it meant that I didn't focus too much on the details of what I was doing, and more on the most important defining features of my subjects. I loved how these turned out, as they successfully captured people on the move and almost gave a brief glimpst into their lives.

For this sketch, we observed the 2nd years as they were working on their own art. We each chose a subject and spent 5-10 minutes working on a drawing of them. This was a lot easier to add detail to as they didn't move as much and they were always sat in the same spot.

Regarding this work and drawing people in day to day life, I decided to have a look at some artists that may have done the same thing. I came across the artist Liz Steel, who sketches, paints and inks people in the world around her. Unlike my work, she is more focused on using coloured inks to create tone and depth in her work. I particularly enjoy the use of negative space almost to create the illusion of something being there. I feel as though this is also expressed in my work slightly through the use of charcoal and very brisk lines - especially shown in the drawings I did in McDonald's - which replicates a similar environment that she did her work in (a cafe).

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HUMAN POSE #3

We started the lesson off by analysing a video of a live model and breaking down the most fundamental parts of the pose. We reduced him to a simple skeleton, beginning with the spine, hips and shoulders and then moving on to add limbs and small details. This really helped me visualise poses in a simpler way, which I will utilise in future drawings!

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HUMAN POSE #2:

For these drawings we did much the same idea as the previous post (2 minute drawings) however, this time we learnt an interesting technique that we were going to try and incorporate.

This technique involved marking out all of the furthest points of our references so that we could correctly proportion everything and get the general idea of where everything was going to be on the page in comparision to each other.

We started off by choosing a different reference image each with an interesting pose that we liked, and did a quick sketch to show to the class. Then we collectively decided to draw one image, which turned out to be mine!

Afterwards, we then drew the image on an A1 sheet of paper, which I had never done before! I started off by using the technique that we learnt earlier and drew the general shape of the body. During this process I didn't use a rubber as I wanted the scruffy lines of my initial sketch to come through. However, because of this I found later on down the line I had large patches of pencil lines where I had kept on correcting myself, making it hard to distinguish what the features actually were. To combat this, I got a golden metallic marker and enhanced all the lines that were slightly too messy and it made everything stand out more! I'm really happy with the outcome of this!

I really liked this techinique! With larger pieces such as the final image, I usually struggle to size up the reference and still keep it in proportion, which I feel as though I didn't do this time.

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HUMAN POSES:

We began to practise drawings of human anatomy based off of photos and real life starting with a quick 2 minute pose sketch based off of a reference we liked on Pinterest. I chose this piece as I enjoyed how dynamic the legs were, and I felt like it could be interesting to sketch. I started by quickly mapping out the body parts with quick lines and then added muscle and clothes on top of that. I don’t think I quite positioned it right on the page, and because of this I ran out of space for the feet and had to fit them in at the end. Later on we learnt a technique, which you will see in the next posts, that I think could have prevented this issue - so next time I will try to use that.

I used a HB pencil to create this.

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Photoshoot inspired by Saul Leiter and Sophie Calle's work.

Previous post for context!

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REPORTAGE PHOTOSHOOT:

We left the art classroom for a bit and went to take photos in the nearby park. At this point I had decided on my response to the brief and tried to take photos in accordance to that.

Since our project is about reportage, I thought it would interesting to look at someone else’s journey from the lens of a ‘stalker’. I tried to replicate and take inspiration from Saul Leiter’s work for these photos and his use of framing and photographing people in their daily lives. I also took some inspiration from Sophie Calle’s work, an artist/photographer who would use morally grey techniques to get a further insight into stranger’s lives - almost like a stalker herself.

More images from this photoshoot in the next post!

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STORYBOARD OF OUR OBSERVATIONS 2:

Here's a quick explaination of our storyboard featured in the last post!

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STORYBOARD OF OUR OBSERVATIONS

After we took those photos and assembled them in a coherent order, we all paired up again and came up with storyboards of some sort of journey. We decided to create Sir Gibbins the Paladin Mouseketeer and followed him on his adventure to slay the Duck of Doom and his old squire turned evil... Junior the Rabbit.

Credits to @fyrelegend for the amazing storyboard!

Here is a quick digital illustration I did of Sir Gibbins the Paladin Mouseketeer!