The brief asks to draw an image of a cat or a dog and to make it ‘real’ or an accurate depiction of it.
Next to draw the design using only 5 lines. I also added a few other ways of drawing the design, to simplify it further such as making the image out of different basic shapes, continuous line drawing, 60, 30, 15 and 10 second drawings all of the same image. Some are more successful than others. The ones I like are the continuous line drawing and the simpler shapes studies.
During these studies I always felt as if something wasn’t right or that I was doing something wrong. Oversimplified images are not my thing and I constantly felt the need to go back and refine them. I did a digital version on Photoshop on the iPad and used texture to represent the different colours and textures of the pug. I felt that this area came out much better than expected and began to enjoy what I was creating.
At this point I stumbled across the artist Deb Weires who uses visual distortion and collage in her portrait paintings. My aim was to produce a similar study in the style of this artist before putting the image into a narrative.
I started by drawing out a simplified shape of the pug and then working into it with watercolour before adding the textures and details from the collages image.
Next I took into Photoshop to edit further and add a digital twist. Working again with some of the collage materials, blending options and different brushes I wanted to give a narrative about the responsibilities of owning a dog. With the lead up to Christmas; I used the well known tag line of “not just for Christmas” Aiming the illustration to appeal to a younger target audience whilst thinking this would work well on stickers, fliers and cards.
I liked the idea of this exercise although I don’t feel I implemented it correctly but I think the process is something I could follow up in the future producing to a better standard. I still find I am struggling letting go when it comes to unrefined drawings, constantly feeling as if the work is unsuccessful if it isn’t produced to a higher standard. This is something that I will need to work on through further exercises.
Illustration 1 