sketch book development

okay, continuing with progression on my concertina. after a group crit i decided that a mono print will be better for my publication due to the faith i have in my self for the screen print (trust me would come out crap) so at this point im feeling positive. i made a list of what places i thougt was key to the city of leeds to draw for my publication. struggled with that so i went on a walk to find some of the things i think is key points to the city and to find a collection of images that would look good all post apocalyptic like.

after collecting 12 images it was time to take them to the studio and start to draw them up. my idea is to draw the pages and make mono prints to create texture for elements and backgrounds for the pages.

i got about half way through drawing my selected picture and it hit me... hit me hard. remember a few blog posts back when i said i cant draw buildings??? well in my excitement i decided to create a publication with nothing init but buildings. i really cant draw buildings at all. check it out >>>

aslo i want this publication to be inspired by jim kays illustrations from a monsters call. i think it will be a good challenge for me. it steps away from what im used to and might help me loosen up and be less pressures about keeping things neat and crisp. im currently reading the book and the art work is amazing by side the text it really speaks well. the

1.proportion is all off. 2. the lines are all wonky witch doesnt make it sit true 3. the buildings look like there falling inti the ground 4. speeking of ground the hole thing looks like its on a hill 5. eatch part of this picture has its own different centre line. and 6. im in trouble.

with a little bit of hope i though the images could be saved with the mono prints that i made earlier. after some guidance and another photoshop master class with georgie (blog shout out to georgie) i applied the mono prints to the picture.

i had to grey scale the images because i got more than one colour, there was a grey and a blue in there. but even that didn't help my buildings look any better. now they just look like they have been put through that app what makes things look like they have been pencl drawn you know that crap thing that just makes everything pixelated to make people think that its been drawn.

    
i might have to go back to the drawing board on this idea.

okay. so instead of running away from drawing buildings i ran to teresa and she kicked my arse into gear and she was open and honest and told me what it is that was making the image look rubbish and she adressed the parts that worked...so basicly she told me what needed work and what was working and told me how to make the image better all round.
i needed to make drop shadows in the picture to make it look deeper and to create casted shadows on the buildings. and also to make some of my drawings into basic shapes of texture or tones.

further development

so i took teresa's advice and got on with it. i am pleased with the the out come this is the first time i can say iv enjoyed doing somthing with more printed technique i cant say that i like how it has addapted to my work. but i am pleased with it visually.

this is my first approuch. so what i did was i scanned in my drawing of the city and all of the monoprints i had done. i layered areas over and over with mono prints i aslo cropped parts of the prints and made them fit the picture. i also play around with multiply and transparency. playing with each layers levels until i got this dark and course image. i think i like it because theres a equal level of crafted and digital aaaaand print its well balanced. i still think the drawings need more work on but for now it will have to do. i would have shown you screen shots of the layers and my working outs on photoshop but i was too excited and enjoying my self and forgot to screen shot and accidently merged all the layers and saved over it. but ill do that on my next image.

im still thinking about the second colour i can use but i think ill actuily apply that to the pages not the actuial drawing its self. i think the images are pretty solid on its own.

im not using this colour or this patten for the pages this was to give me a slight idea of somthing been there and to see if it would take away from the drawing.

next im going to print the image off and work on it more by printing on to the printed picture, im going to give it some ink splats and see how that works if it works well then ill scan it in once again and get the leves right and use that as my final image. if these work and im happy ill do this process on all my images to create my publicaion...