Scratchboard final and 3D sketches

Scratch-board Final Illustration

Above is my 3rd and final scratch-board study for my Illustration class.

I am not sorry to see the last of it, though I think my technique has improved over the first landscape we did. Still scratch-board does require some pre-thinking prior to starting so that you have an ideal where the lights need to go. Since it is the reverse of most pre-drawing thinking it can be a challenge. For this Illustration we re-visited the still life drawing that we did for our final Pen and Ink project. So here it is done on black scratch-board instead of white paper. I am relatively pleased with how it came out. The skull was tricky to do, but I think it works. In case you are wondering I would say it took me about 5 hours to do this drawing. Scratch-board is not quick.

We are now moving on and back with our next project. Moving on because we will be adding color to our Illustrations, but moving back because we are going back to pen and ink. Many illustrations you see in books esp. children books are done with waterproof ink and watercolor washes to add color. This is the technique we will be using for our first assignment with color. Since only a "tight" drawing is due for our next class on Monday I am not sure when I will have another illustration image for you. In case you were wondering a tight drawing is a finished drawing that is ready to be copied onto the media that will be used for the final illustration. Usually the transfer is done with a black/grey "carbon" paper, though for the scratch-board projects we used a white chalked paper.  As a total aside here, it just occurred to me that the white chalked paper could be used to transfer quilting patterns to quilt tops.  White chalk should wash off easily, in fact probably too easily, the quilter who uses it should probably remark immediately with something that won't be so easily rubbed off, but it is that initial transfer that can be a pia so this might be a good tool.

I have some additional images for you today, these are the sketches I did for my 3D class on Tuesday. The assignment was to sketch 20 protozoa concepts. So here are the 20 I did. Our assignment for next Tuesday is to do a space sketch, I had trouble with what I started in class so I have to go back and start over with the design idea that I want to produce. What surprised me in class was that I was almost the only student who actually followed instruction, with not only 20 sketches but done with charcoal and largish. Several students had 20 sketches, but they had done them with pencil and the drawings were quite small, made it hard for the rest of us to see what they had done so we could comment and offer suggestions. Oh well, their loss, as I am sure he marked down their homework grade. These sketches are based on actual protozoa, but I have combined elements that I am fairly sure would never actually be combined in real life.

 

Well that's it for today. I am very tired and plan on going to have a nap shortly after I finish this update, was up way too late last night getting the Illustration work done. Till my next update, Happy Halloween,  and I hope everyone stateside remembers to change their clocks come Saturday night as we go back to Standard time here in the US this coming weekend.

Package Design Finished

Above is my packaging project finished. We were supposed to be creating a series so instead of making a larger box (which would have been a royal pia) I used my 2nd label design for green tea. Course I have taken some liberties doing that as Red Rose doesn't manufacture a green tea.   Out of the two label designs I believe the label with the tea cup and the rose petals works the best. A fellow student suggested having rose petals floating in the tea. I realized that the red gets a bit lost against the color of the tea so to make them more apparent I scattered 3 across the label outside the cup.  The tea cup is from my Grandmothers China set, and it is actually filled with Red Rose tea.

I think the hardest part of this project was getting the boxes made, six sided boxes are not easy to make, and of course I made mistakes and had to throw one box out because I made the sides the wrong height. I would consider these gift boxes, not something that a supplier would use for regular packaging. Much too hard to put together. I also had an issue with the label that goes around the outside of the box, I didn't originally make it long enough so had to increase the size a bit (about a 1/4 of an inch), not to mention that I had to print it on 2 sheets of paper and then glue it together. The overall length of the label was approx 15 inches so even if I had purchased legal sized paper I would have still had a problem, and my printer doesn't print ledger which is 17 inches long. I totally understand why modern packaging is printed directly on the package stock instead of separate labels. Here are two more images of my final designs:

My other image for you today is a scan of my most recent scratch board illustration. This was a nature illustration, we were supposed to illustrate one animal from a set of pictures the Instructor handed out. I picked a chipmunk. As I was sketching it the Instructor stopped by my desk and suggested that I should add a bird of some sort. I picked a chickadee, sitting on a tree. I am not as pleased with this illustration as I was with the first one. I know I could have done a better job on the foreground, and am not sure about the rocks and the trees the chickadee is on, though I did do a bit of touching up on the rocks (adding in black ink to hide some of the white) so they are a bit better then they were.

That is it for today's post. The rest of what I have been working on doesn't photograph. I have been busy collecting images for my next Graphic Design project, and also doing some image work for my Dreamweaver final web site project. I re-took some photo's of last years art work and then processed the photo's in Photoshop for use on the web and created thumbnail images.

As usual comments are welcome.  

Shoe Revealed

It's done. I finally finished the shoe yesterday afternoon and presented it this morning in class for critique. The instructor seemed to like it, and it is one of the ones that he kept for display. Though that isn't really a huge honor, I think he kept most of the ones that were finished today to put on display in the classroom. I am not totally pleased with it. I got the back section a bit too long so didn't have enough space for the front slope area between the toe and the rise for the shoelaces. Ah well, by the time I realized the problem there was no way I was going to take the existing construction apart. So I will just have to live with it. Here are a couple more views of the finished shoe.

Side View

rear side view.

What he liked about it, it has mass, it is very solidly constructed, I used lots of glue. There is a variation in color and in the direction of the planes (cardboard pieces) He felt that it is a bit architectural. I think because if you look between the layers you can see the pieces I used as separators. Many of the other students just used cardboard layers, stacking them up one on top (or against) the other. It works very well for some of the designs, but I didn't want to cut that much cardboard so used separators.  But I think I spent 12 to 14 hours building this shoe, so even with the separators it wasn't a quick project. A couple of students did heeled strappy type sandals very successfully. The guys tended toward sneakers, or boots. My shoe boot is a bit of a combination, heeled but still a boot/shoe.  We are now moving onto a new project, this one will use sheet metal (Aluminum) and we are supposed to be designing our own Protozoa. The set up for this project is that a new protozoa has been found and we have been commissioned by a museum to create a wall sculpture that depicts it. I should have sketches to show next week.

In Illustration I finished my first scratchboard project. This is a landscape done from a photograph provided by our instructor.

Structure in NE field.

I probably should have scanned the photo I used so you could compare it to the finished image, but I didn't and it is too late now as I have turned it back to the instructor. Not much to say about this, it is what it is. Though I will say that this is not a technique that I think I will fall in love with. It takes a long time to do, I think I spent about 4 hours on this one.

For graphic design, my packaging project is due on Thursday, and for my Dreamweaver class we have to create a flow chart for our web site. That's it for now, I may add a post with images of my packaging Thursday or Friday. Wish me luck getting that done for Thursday class. As always comments are welcomed.