Figure Study Trip to Oxford and Brighton

Yesterday I went to Oxford to sit and study the homeless that live on the streets. Having studied in Oxford for a year, I am aware of the amount of people that live on the streets there. So, armed with a pocketful of change, I took my sketchbook with me to sketch the people I encountered. I didn't spend too long on my sketches, I took care to quickly sketch rough outlines which I would then finish later on. I took care not to be seen but gave money to the buskers that I sketched.

I plan to go back over previous photography work for my foundation year in which I photographed homeless people and will use these for more primary source sketching material.

I have set aside a small brown sketchbook specific for these studies, intended on having it as a separate research sketchbook where I can do my studies, leaving my main sketchbook to be solely used for book and character development.  

I also plan to visit Brighton as this is another place where I see a lot of people sleeping rough.

'Elections Brief' Commission

Back in December of 2017 an email was circulated among AUB students calling for an illustrator to provide illustrations for a magazine. The email was as follows:

"We are looking for someone to fulfil a paid opportunity to design five spot illustrations for the next AUBSU elections campaign and booklet. The illustrations must look good on an A5 page with text around them. We will also need a sixth spot illustration to put on a poster to get people to vote. Taking influence from last year’s campaign we want the images to focus on hands. The five spot illustrations needed for the booklet are as follows:

Design your future: Someone’s hands designing their future taking influence for either architecture/ fashion/ graphics or costume design.

Develop your future: This illustration will be based around hands performing the photographic development process that will in some way develop their future on a sheet of film or paper

Perform your future: Using some sort of performance based art, either dancing, acting or singing.

Paint your future: Someone’s hands painting their future

Mould your future: Someone’s hands moulding their future from some sort of mouldable substance

Voting: We would like this design to be kept stylistically similar to the others; other than that we would like to give more freedom with this illustration although it should encourage our students to vote."

I emailed enquiring about this work and was asked to submit a portfolio. I did as requested, and was chosen to provide the illustrations! I decided to use adobe Illustrator for this as I felt to achieve the 'fun, bubbly style' that was requested in a further email. Here are the pieces I submitted in the order that they are on the brief:

Lauren Humphrey Photoshop Workshop

Today I attended an optional workshop with Lauren Humphrey which was all about creating images in photoshop using layers of colour. I attended purely because I aim to make a book for my Major Project using this software and want to have as much knowledge as possible as to what I can achieve.

Lauren asked us to pick a sketch to work with, and seeing as my story will feature a dog, I chose a sketch of my lovely dog Max wearing a hat.

We were then asked to download a Photoshop template which consisted of 4 windows. We then had to place our sketch in the first window.

We then had to pick 3 colours to use as our layers. Ideally this had to be a red, blue and yellow, so I picked variations of these that I like. With a layer for each colour, with each set to multiply so they would layer, we had to build up the image using layers of our three colours.

Repeating this for the other window, we then had to make another 3 scenes. I chose to change the hat on Max and make each slightly different. The result looks like a pop art album cover and I kind of like it. However, I am not sure it is a process I will use when creating my book.

Here is my final illustration of Max in various hats (and a moustache!)