Source a range of images in which illustrators have created a sense of us and them or ‘otherness’. Read the images and identify how you think they have done this. Think about how they could have represented the subject differently, to avoid creating such a distance between them and the subject. You may want to… Continue reading Research Point: A Sense of Us and Them
Exercise: A Rose By Any Other Name
Choose a houseplant, a cutting from the garden or a bunch of flowers. Focus on a small area and draw what you see. Be as accurate in describing shape, form and detail as you can. Aim to create a drawing from which somebody else could recognise your plant. Now, draw the plant again, this time… Continue reading Exercise: A Rose By Any Other Name
Research Point: Natural Science Illustrations
The Wellcome Trust is a global charity that supports biomedical research into human and animal health, part of which is the Wellcome Collection – a London-based gallery and online resource that explores the connections between medicine, life and art in the past present and future. Visit the gallery or website or do your own reach… Continue reading Research Point: Natural Science Illustrations
Exercise: Architectural Illustration
Create an architectural illustration that shows the contrast between a building or structure of you choice and its surroundings. This contrast may be the relationship between an old building and its more modern neighbour, its location, or perhaps the contrast is more embedded in its alterations and renovations. Alternatively you can choose a structure such… Continue reading Exercise: Architectural Illustration
Research Point: Architectural Illustrators
Different architectural illustrators approach the task of documenting visual space and the built environment in different ways. Some are driven by the ideas that drawing and illustration offered, others by the ideas inherent in the architectural style they are representing. Look at a range of different architectural illustrators and identify how their choice of drawing… Continue reading Research Point: Architectural Illustrators
Exercise: Everyday Fashion
Draw a range of people in different clothes. In some of the drawings try and describe their whole outfit; in others, focus on specific elements, such as different types of hat. You can take a reportage approach and draw people out on the street, or use yourself, friends or family as models. Focus on describing… Continue reading Exercise: Everyday Fashion
Research Point: Fashion Illustration
Is there a difference between the imagery created by the fashion illustrators from the early twentieth century to the 1950s and those since the 1990s? Research historic and contemporary examples of fashion illustration by looking magazines, accessing internet resources or visiting galleries. Has fashion illustration changed over this period or is it the fashion of… Continue reading Research Point: Fashion Illustration
Exercise: Drawing on Location
Use your sketchbooks to produce a series of drawings and notes that documents an event of your choice. Try and produce a body of work that depicts the event over a period of time. An event can be defined as something happening within a limited time slot, but you can also choose to interpret the… Continue reading Exercise: Drawing on Location
Exercise: Courtroom Dramas
Sketchbook in hand, seated indoors, and with the action happening in front of you in a slow and orderly fashion, the courtroom must be an almost perfect place for a reportage illustrator to work. However, trials can run on for days and weeks, the tension and drama is embedded in what is said and there’s… Continue reading Exercise: Courtroom Dramas
Exercise: Drawing on the Familiar
Use your sketchbooks to draw a space you are familiar with. Draw the location, the people and activities taking place and use noted to capture your thoughts and feelings, dialogue and other details that can help to bring the drawings to life. You may want to work in a private domestic space or an external… Continue reading Exercise: Drawing on the Familiar