At the very start of the drawing approaches unit I was spectacle as to how I would find it, through out the last project I found it really hard to move out of my comfort zone and try out new techniques and push myself as an illustrator, on completion I feel I have a much higher understanding of what drawing is, my initial thoughts on this being “ drawing can be anything you want it to be” though I still believe this to be true, at the time of writing that statement I wasn’t wanting to try any of the many things drawing can be I am now much more aware and open to using of some of these processes which I will now discuss.
I choose ‘Utopias’ as the theme I would be following through this project, I wanted to zone in on personal utopias to do this I wrote a list of the things I would include in my own utopia ranging from my favourite drink to my family and friends, something that stuck in my mind from the list was my bike, I have been in the middle of building up a new bike and have a lot of parts laying about my room, the shapes they made and the way parts fit together where all things I was ready to record.
In my foundation year whist life drawing we were encouraged to try different drawing approaches one of which was ‘blind drawing’ I had always thought it a strange concept to grasp, to not look at the page and only at what you are drawing, though I remember that the outcomes were often quirky and exciting and after doing some in the class room I begun to make study of my bike and it’d different parts, even when trying really hard to think where the pen was on the page and visualising where everything was it is never going to come out how you plan so instead I found it easier and more effective to work at a faster pace and without removing my pen from the page once I had started. I found this method to be a complete contradiction to the way I had become so use to working it took a few attempts to feel comfortable with the outcome but one thing I was really enjoying was the freeness I got from using this technique it allowed me to create a number of studies in a reasonably short amount of time. The obvious next step was to move on to ‘continuous line’
It was after going home for the holidays and seeing family and friends, which made me realise that they were more important in my personal utopia than belongings. To Further my knowledge into different drawing approaches I then explored ‘continuous line drawing’ It was a fairly new process to me and took a little getting use to, but after a few goes I found it to be the perfect way for be to capture my family and friends it’s a fairly quick process meaning that I could sit with my sketch book and record many different people in a short space of time. I was still working in a media I was comfortable with but the results where so dissimilar from what I would normally have if being asked to draw a friend, but I found them to show a lot more character than I would have ever thought. To amplify the lines and shapes that I was getting from the studies I used adobe illustrator to create my final outcomes.
The two drawing approaches that I have used with in this project I feel have been truly influential and it has given me a chance to work out of my comfort zone as well as showing be a whole new way in which to work. Out of the two ‘continuous line drawing’ was the one I really felt most inspired by and I know it is a technique I will use in the future. The unit has further opened my eyes and been an inspirational experience and a great learning curve to work from in the future.
