Drawings in Rome - Rome Trip (28th Feb - 5th March 2016)

During the trip to Rome I was more focused on exploring the culture and famous areas of Italy (the colosseum and the Vatican) and I had not drawn much during my stay to be honest.

We had visited a few museums/galleries, though there had been some complications of policies with one or two museums that we are never allowed to draw, which was disappointing as there were some interesting subjects that I wanted to draw, i.e. statue heads. During the visit of the national gallery of Rome (3rd March) I had managed to draw a few sketches/drawings, but then a strange encounter then took up the rest of my time during the visit.

Statue heads sketches I had done in the National Gallery of Rome.

What happened afterwards as I was busy drawing my sketches, a lone elderly man approached me, admiring my sketches. I glanced at him and thought to be a passer-by who was just taking a quick peak into what I was doing, until he started speaking to me. He said “Draw face.” At first I didn’t know what he meant, until I realised that he was requesting me to do a portrait drawing of him!

Our language barrier was proving to be in the way, and I gave in for his request and accepted. He was willing to pay 20 Euros which is really surprising, and he seriously meant it! This strange encounter then turned into my first live commission for a customer!

I was nervous and a little shaky considering I had not done this before. I am not confident in drawing faces and was a little worried that the portrait drawing may not turn out as well and be unsatisfied with the result, plus I wasn’t sure if the customer would like it once I put time and as much effort into it, but in the end I had went ahead with the commission.

The result of the portrait drawing. I feel the drawing could of have been better and to be honest it’s not that great to my standard. To the customer, the drawing is ok, which I am more than happy to hear. As long as the customer is satisfied with the drawing, then it is ok for me. He then gave me the 20 Euros which he had promised.

The session had went overtime where I was supposed to meet up with the group to leave the gallery and had left in a rush. After catching up with the group and tutors I had told them about my experience and then I realised that I should have taken a photo of the elderly man so I can compare him to the portrait I had done.

Overall it was a weird experience and I wouldn’t have thought that something like this would happen. It’s just feels out of the blue! It was a good drawing experience in the end that had helped boost my confidence in drawing for a customer in a live commission in a public environment! 

Life Drawing - Movement

Quick observational drawings during movement. It was hard to capture the essence of movement in the drawings due to the difficulty of getting down the form and structure very quickly as the model moves around the studio. The drawings were done fairly quickly, but seems to fail to capture the walk/movement cycle, as I tend to focus on one part of the model to draw/study from, such as the head and part of the torso.

As usual I continue to concentrate on making short studies on one part of the model in various angles/perspective as the model loops around in her walk cycle. It was slightly hard to get as much detail and expressive marks to convey the structure in a very short time frame before the model moves out of perspective, though it was challenging to help me to remember as much as I can and to quickly draw them. 

Facial Expressions

Drawing faces was one of the things that I wanted to improve on, though one of the things that I tend to struggle on drawing was the facial expressions. I usually draw faces stylistically, though a good practice of drawing faces from life would help to explore the anatomy of the human face and the facial structures that help convey facial expressions. I struggled to draw the faces at first but I thought it would be best to break down the face and the expression into simpler shapes and lines to make things slightly easier to understand the form and shape rather going into detail.

Gesture - Poses

An experimental piece using Ink and a stick to create expressive mark makings for the life drawing session focusing on poses. Trying to keep the marks to a bare minimum so the illustration is not clustered/over saturated with a lot of markings and detail that would otherwise make the drawings look less expressive. Didn’t find it difficult although there are various poses I’m not exactly strong to draw out since the perspective or pose is not what I used to see/draw all the time, but at least this makes it a little more challenging rather than doing the norm in order to improve perspective.

Day trip to London Natural History Museum

A trip to London’s Natural History Museum and the V&A to draw from life as well as to explore the museums. As I have been there quite a number of times over the past few years, I never get tired of it, most of the time I end up looking at things I haven’t seen yet nor explore every part of the museum.

A sketch I had drawn from life which I later polished near the end of the trip. I didn’t want to spend a huge amount of time so I had timed myself to see how much I can get done, but I do want to take my time, and not to rush it for the sake of drawing it fast. Took me around 45 mins. 

First Story covers - design and presentation

Live brief to produce illustration covers for the anthology books of poems for schools.

Titles for each over are:

“My Voice as a Shy Tiger”

“Broken but Mending”

“I Can’t Imagine…”

“Journeys”

Decided to do covers that I can quickly think for design/illustration. 3 covers out of the 4 I had chosen to do are “My Voice of a Shy Tiger”, “I Can’t Imagine…” and “Journeys”.

Here are the illustrations I had produced for the chosen titles that I would be presenting for the schools, all averaging around 2+ hours to produce. These are slightly polished than I usually intended to do so I can express what the final product would look like.

Illustration for “My Voice as a Shy Tiger”

 Illustration for “I Can’t Imagine…”

Illustration for “Journeys”

These covers were then presented in groups for each cover to pitch my design/illustrations to discuss my ideas to the students to get an understanding of what the cover is intended to show and the ideas behind it that helps to draw some relevance between the image and the title.

I was surprised that one of my covers, the “I Can’t Imagine…” illustration was short listed, despite being one of my least favourite covers from the 3 in my honest opinion. Though this is something that I shouldn’t be complaining about since situations like this where your least favourite design is picked over some of your best covers that was made for the other titles within the professional practice. At least one of my cover is shortlisted by the students, better than not having any cover shortlisted at all. 

Finalised version of the cover ready to be sent to the school for their final choosing.

Children Expression - Child Drawings

Looking at photos of myself as a child and to make some studies/quick sketches on the anatomy of a child, something I have not touched upon in drawing people, although I have drawn child characters, but for anatomy studies. 

Most drawings are of portraits of myself as a child. To draw a child involved in an activity is hard and I did not find any photos that I can use as reference to help me draw a small sequence. Most of these sketches focuses on the face and facial features, something that I want to improve on when it comes to draw people, as they are the most defining feature of a person.