Good morning everyone! Another week another set of flower illustrations
This week I experimented with coloured pens and animation. The animation was a collaboration I did with my husband, its only a short little thing but it was fun to work on and something I really want to experiment more with in the future. You can view the animation here
I learned that if I want to have my style of flowers animated then I need to simplify just a little and use bolder lines, as you can see in the animation, the lines are so fine it’s hard to actually see a lot of the detail. I also need to consider the layout and size of the animation and what the piece will look like at the end, it should look like a full illustrated piece. We worked with what we could in the time we had and these things I outline are of course all minor things that can be easily implemented or rectified in future animations.
The coloured pens showed me no love this week, didn’t help that at the start of the week I came down with a cold and missed a day of drawing, it really made it difficult to get into the flow of things. I thought I’d have loads of fun being able to experiment with the different pens and markers and create something incredible, the images in my head were so extravagant and ornate I couldn’t wait to start getting them down.
The reality was, I felt completely overwhelmed by all the choice and found myself paralysed and unable to make anything. It got to the point where I almost gave up and did nothing, but this challenge means a lot to me, so I had to push through, so I took some time to reassess.
One of the problems was, the images in my head were more work than I had time to produce and they were so colourful and varied, I simply didn’t have the time to experiment and put things together on paper to see if they would work they way they did in my mind’s eye.
I had to simplify, I did a few pieces restricted to a couple of colours but still found it difficult to enjoy the process, so I adjusted to a monochrome palette, that helped me to find a flow. I really dislike several of the pieces from this week, but I’m glad I pushed through as by the end I started to enjoy it again, and actually produced some pieces I really like and look forward to pulling together into a print. With that said, I don’t want to continue with this medium any longer and rather than risk losing interest in this project I’m going to switch mediums rather than continuing with pens for another 5 pieces.
Next week I’m going back to watercolour, I’ve been feeling the itch and can’t wait to jump back in! I’ve been watching lots of videos on how to paint and use watercolour whilst I’ve been doing my flowers and I’m looking forward to implementing the techniques I’ve learned and seeing how that looks with my way of working.
I’m excited for the week, I need to get crack-a-lacking!
See you all next week!
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