Reflective Summary
I have done less than the bare minimum for these exercises. I must come back and re-do. I prioritized work on the assignment, rather than these two exercises.
By way of explanation, a mix of illness, Christmas, a major disruptive storm and the loss of some important luggage during Christmas travel all contributed. Laptop, ipad and my watercolour&brushes all gone. Ah well, challenges are there to be adapted to.
That said, 36 hours of air travel/airport life for what should have been a 45 minute flight, certainly gave me much mental material to work with.
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Exercise: Figure in an Interior
Sketchbook exploration
Breaking from what I did in past, given time and various constraints. Here, I’m trying out moving away from naturalistic. Can I simplify everything to square/rectilinear shapes. Can I focus any sense of detail on the foreground character without detailed rendering? Can I convey the mood by constraining my palette severely?
This is a small sketch, or study. It feels like it should be done much much larger, so that the areas of colour could be blended more smoothly (and my shaky hands would be less evident).
Research Point 3: Figures in Interiors
This has been captured in a separate post. Post can be found here
Exercise: Telling a Story
My travel plans got dramatically impacted by a major storm that hit (all of?) North America. Various digital doodles came about as I sat in the airport waiting on my very delayed flight. With gale force winds crossing 90 kph, the flight was a long way off. Once I got home, and could acquire some new supplies, I did some further thumbnail explorations in my sketchbook.
I really like the simplification of the people down into blocks. They remind me of Henry Moore sculptures. The flat colour, and use of line, suggests something inspired from the Woodlands School of Art, and Norval Morrisseau in particular. It is important, though, that I in no way appropriate from the Indigenous nations of Canada. I am simply noting my inspirations.
Sketchbook exploration
Observations from sketches:
- If planes are included, they need to fly in teh same direction as the people are moving. Otherwise there is a narrative conflict (what are the planes doing moving towards what the people are fleeing?)
- The sun mask is not relevant to the story, I don’t think.
- The final thumbnail has a nice geometric quality to it. Might read as war theme though.
- The clean lines are less interesting, in the people, than in the ones in the digital sketch.