Observational drawing

Brief:

This one week project is an introduction to observational drawing for Animation. A key stage of the animated film preproduction and an essential skill for creating engaging and authentic characters, building film narratives, worlds and environments. This was an opportunity to explore our own authentic voice, and look at the world with our fresh set of eyes.

Approach:

During the on location drawing session, we were to create a series of pencil monochromatic sketches of strangers and their environment. Our main focus is to draw in a loose, spontaneous and free way, paying close attention to details of the scene in front of your eyes.

A thorough and attentive observation was essential.

We will then have an opportunity to unfold one of location sketches into a narrative sequence. Then we would be asked to select one of the location sketches, and treat it as middle part of the story.

Using your imagination, you will create two more drawings: one for the beginning and one for the end. The aim is to make it into a little story, with a change in the middle (3 Frame).

Monday 1st November:

This is the first time in a very long time i’ve done observational drawing so these first sketches were quite rusty. I took quite a long time to get used to the real feel of it and was afraid of the risk of making incorrect lines on my sketchbook as i tried my hardest not to rub out any unintentional lines. This was also very challenging due to the constant motion of people in the environment – People walking and fidgeting, babies running around and screaming, changes in facial expressions from people conversating, the motion of the tubes moving at high speed, with only a limited amount of time to draw people before they get off.

  • My plan for my final project (Sketch of my 3 frames)
These are my rusty sketches from my visit to the Tate Mordern 🙂

Tuesday 2nd November:

We had to draw a set of textures that we saw infront of us. These are the different textures i had on my desk and on my laptop screen.
  • 2 minutes
  • 25 Minutes
We also had to draw an image of our hand, The first image is a quick 2 minute sketch of my hand, planning the scale of my hand on paper, and the second image is my final sketch of my left hand.

MY PLAN:

    My first initial plan was to do 3 different frames, one being a close up image of a camera, with the lens showing a blurred reflection of the city scape, the second one being a side profile of a woman and the third one to be a back view of the same woman but with the beatiful city scape of london and its river thames.

    However, i did a second plan and based it off of my experience on Monday when visiting the Tate modern. On this day, there were an increasingly amount of babies roaming around the place, maybe due to an event, touching the censor lines that set off when touched. So with this happening, I based my final story on a baby reaching out for one of Yinka Shonibare CBE, a British-Nigerian artist. Yinka Shonibare CBE’s work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. A hallmark of his art is the brightly coloured Ankara fabric he uses.

    • Here is the mid sketch of where my initial idea came in.
    • Planned sketch of baby stealing book from the artists display (Disclaimer: It didnt actually happen!)

    Here’s a link to all of the first year animations work to the Observational Drawing workshop:

    https://artslondon.padlet.org/ibarszcz/cpj741f8bf90xcf?utm_campaign=transactional&utm_content=padlet_url&utm_medium=email&utm_source=started_a_padlet