Evaluative Blogs #3

I sent my robin silhouettes to S, and while I waited I cracked my knuckles and started my exciting extra project!! I bring to you, the loosest silhouettes ever. Designed to stop myself from being too precious as this project means a lot to me. Those of you who also follow me on Pinterest will have seen the amount of Mayan/Aztec clothing I've been pinning lately.

My plan with these was to get the basic shape down, trying to vary the proportions to create a simple, but distinctive rough. Using a technique I picked up from a tutor on a different course, I scanned them into photoshop and used the liquify filter to move some parts around before I worked into them using a light grey brush. This process took a lot more time than I anticipated, but I think the end results are much more interesting than if I had have drawn them my usual way.

S got back to me about the robin silhouettes, and while I had resolved some of the issues, I had missed the overall point of the exercise - making the negative space more interesting. So, S explained how I could improve and so I went back to drawing, and after some subtler edits, I landed on the final roughs.

From here, I was able to finalise the linework and move onto preparing watercolour paper and colours.

The first image is my default orange and blue combination, which I do really like, however, it's very autumny which would be the wrong time of year for the setting, and so the blue and pink combination came about. This was an attempt at using unconventional colours while still portraying the identity of a robin well. The third rough leaned more towards the realistic colours while still paying homage to complementary colours. Finally, with some input from S, I came to the final image which combined elements from all three.

I was unsure as to how the colours would translate in watercolour as viewing colours on a digital screen is much different from mixing colours on absorbent paper and so, as I finished the background of the first page, I quickly scanned it in and made a sample of how the colours would turn out.

The first page will be the coldest, as robins begin building nests as winter turns to spring and as the story progresses, the greens will become warmer, reflecting the colour roughs more closely.

Now all that's left to do is complete the rest of the backgrounds and create some textures to lift onto the robins.

Exciting times!

See you next time,

Mort.