Evaluation and Reflection of the OLIO Module

The tasks for Olio in producing a visual illustration of a given proverb could have gone either way in terms of difficulty in terms of difficulty and luckily I was given a proverb that easily sparked some ideas in illustrating. Producing the presentation roughs for the proverb and the illustration cover was time consuming, considering the fact that it will take some time to finish creating the final artwork, I had spent more time than usual at the rough stage of the illustrations. This was to balance out the workload on the remaining time I have left when it comes to the finished pieces at some point later in the year. Doing quick roughs and hand those in for deadline would mean I would need to spend a lot more time in producing the artworks which could end up ruining my time management for my other modules in the next term or so.

I am confident with the ideas I had expressed for the proverb and felt they are strongly suitable as outcomes. While they somewhat look literal and not ambiguous, the artworks do show some connection to the proverb as a form of narrative (“God sends food, and the Devil sends cooks”). I could of have looked in a different direction in exploring the proverb, though the information outside the obvious may not translate as well for the visual ideas/design.  

I may have spent too much time on the presentation roughs (as they look like the final artworks) though I didn’t want to risk leaving it to the point where a lot of work needs to be done at a later time. This is perhaps the only thing that may have hindered my progression for the module, as I was probably being a little too cautious with the outcomes. Other than that, everything went well.

OLIO - Self-Portrait

For the self-portrait illustration I only want to approach it with a very simple composition and so I went with the side of my head/face. I had not used any photo references of myself so there may be some facial features that might look a little exaggerated. I had not done a self-portrait with digital painting before so I was having some slight difficulties, such as painting the skin and getting some of the proportions right. I did not want to create a realistic digital painting of myself and just went with what my digital painting skills takes me in terms of style and painting. I had went through the process of painting with low expectations due to the lack of experience in painting faces/portraits on Photoshop. The result came out a bit better than I had expected and as I had said before, the face feels a bit stylised (due to my art style) but that is something I do not want to change since the style, over my experience in digital painting, is now my visual language as an digital artist.

Step by step progress of my self-portrait. 

OLIO - Cover Design Part 2

Starting from where I had left off from the presentation rough of my Olio cover illustration I proceed to mix in colours to give the painting a wide variety of different tones and shades. Colour mixing is one of the methods I go through with most of my artworks in the early colouring stage as I like to keep my colour range as broad as possible for experimenting colours and tones, rather than sticking to the palette of the flat colours.

Rough drafting.

Line work.

Layer separations.

Flat colouring. 

Colour mixing stage.

Tone and shading.

Colour refinement.

It may look near polished in terms of completion though this is not the final artwork and the reason for it be at this stage is because I tend to spend quite a lot of time producing/polishing final artworks, so I decided to spend a little more time on it than usual. When it comes to actually finish the illustration I would only have to polish things up, where I would have a lot more time on. 

OLIO - Cover Design Part 1 - 27/10/2016

For the OLIO cover illustration there wasn’t really any design roughs to begin with, as I went straight into creating the cover from scratch without putting much thought into the idea. The concept of my illustration idea was to create a simple imagery that depicts stories, characters and imagination. With the template I was given I had worked within the provided image space to generate my presentation rough. In terms of visual imagery, the idea was to have a child reading stories from a book, while being followed by these imaginary characters that were from the short stories the child was reading. This is to reflect on the topics of stories, characters and imagination that I personally feel that this illustration course is based on, throughout my 3 years of studying here.

Line work of the illustration at the initial rough stage of progress.

Blocking out sections of the illustration to separate subject matters from backgrounds. This will make things easier to paint objects and characters without having the colours overlapping into outside areas/sections that would otherwise interfere areas that are already painted.

Flat colours is then implemented onto the separated layers of greyed block outs. At this stage this is where I had presented my presentation rough. In terms of feedback it just needs a little more tone or stronger colours to define what is at the foreground and lighter colours for the background to give it a little more depth. Other than that it is very neatly presented as a rough within the given image size/olio template. 

I will continue to refine the illustration until I am satisfied with the result as a more polished version (not final artwork) that will showcase what the final result may look like. 

OLIO - Design Ideas - Refined Ideas - 24/10/2016

I had narrowed down to 3 illustration ideas from the 5 initial roughs and had refined the drafts to give them a little more detail and a basic colour palette to work with tone and colour mixing. Out of the 3 ideas, idea 2 and idea 3 feels more connected to the genre of the Renaissance due to their composition and their range of colours. Idea 1 feels a little flat in its composition and the red colours feels a little over saturated. In the end I am going to polish up Idea 2 and Idea 3 as my presentation roughs for my proverb. 

Idea 1. 

Idea 2. The skeletal Cook reaching out to God’s food.

Step by step progression of Idea 2 from design rough.

Idea 3. Goblin Cooks and creatures (resembling as kitchen appliances) ascending the tower to reach where God’s food is, fighting through humanoid cattle (Purgatory) and vegetables.

Step by step progression of Idea 3 from design rough. 

OLIO - Design Ideas Roughs - 22/10/2016

Rough designs based on the visual research I had looked into earlier, including ideas from my own depiction of the proverb.

“God sends food, and the devil sends cooks”

Idea 1. Conflict between Good and Evil (Food vs Cooks)

Representation of God’s food:

-        Vegetables

-        Chickens

-        Cattles

-        Pigs

-        Fruits

Representation of the Devil’s Cooks

-        Humanoid robots resembling kitchen appliances

-        Blowtorches

-        Kebab Skewers

-        Grills

-        Saucepans

-        Microwaves

A simple idea showcasing the two sides of good and evil facing each other in an epic clash, using food and kitchen hardware to represent God and the Devils’ “servants”.

Idea 2. Clash of the Titans (Muscular cow vs. The Cook) 

Inspired from the idea of “Hercules vs the Nemean Lion”, replacing the subject matters with a cattle (food) being wrestled by a Cook as metaphors for the proverb where man spoils god’s gift.

Idea 3. The fiendish cook reaches out to the meat as God tries to give it to the people. Inspired from the iconic painting “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo. 

The meat is placed at the centre between the reaches of the devilish cook and god (from one side and the other), while the silhouettes of the people tries to reach out to it from the bottom.

Idea 4. Based on the story arcs of Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise from the poem “The Divine Comedy”. 

The idea is to illustrate the demonic cooks trying to ascend the tower to reach the sacred meat, guarded by living vegetables and gigantic beasts (cows, pigs and chickens) who are fending the cooks off and are locked in a battle of eternal struggle. The three tiers from bottom to top are of: Cooks (Inferno), Cattle and chickens (Purgatory) and Vegetables (Paradise/Heaven).

Idea 5. The cooks with devilish wings forked the meat (food) and are dipping it into a hot lake of foul sauce (lava) to have it seasoned and flavoured (essentially representing the spoiling of the good food as said from the proverb).

I will be choosing 3 ideas out of the rough designs that I think is best at representing the proverb. There may be some changes along the way though I will be refining these illustrations and give them basic colours (as they are important to show tone and atmosphere in artworks from the Renaissance period) and then I will narrow down to 2 designs I would want to further refine and polished, before choosing the final idea to be properly illustrated. 

OLIO - Research on Themes and Ideas - 21/10/2016

After noting down the themes from the keywords of my proverb I decided to look into visual imagery from stories and poems from the Renaissance era (or something similar from different times of civilisation/periods) for ideas of symbolism and metaphors, considering the proverb closely relates to the themes of God. For my ideas I am going to attempt in designing visual imagery similar of that to the artworks of the Renaissance, but replacing the subject matters (angels, humans and demons) with the subjects of food and cooks for some comic relief. I will not be replicating what materials it has been used to produce those artworks as I wanted to focus on improving my own digital painting techniques, though the only thing I will be taking into account is the composition and colours for some effective impact.

“The Creation of Adam” painted c. 1508-1512. Fresco painting by Michelangelo

Gustave Dore’s illustration on the story of “The Divine Comedy”, illustrating the characters Dante and Virgil’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. “The Divine Comedy” A poem by Dante Alighieri, which is split in three parts: “Inferno”, “Purgatorio” and “Paradiso” (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise/Heaven)

One of Gustave Dore’s illustration on “Purgartorio” (Purgatory)

One of Gustave Dore’s illustration on “Paradiso” (Paradise/Heaven)

The Tower of Babel. “The Confusion of Tongues” Gustave Dore (1865)

“Hercules and the Nemean Lion”. Rubens. Late 18^th Century – 19^th Century

After looking into these stories and illustrations the one that strikes me is the poem “The Divine Comedy” as it depicts the characters’ journey of ascension to Heaven from the depths of Hell. There are some ideas that I would like to play around using this story’s structure as a starting point to create one of my ideas such as the ascension from hell to heaven, or a tower or a tree with floors depicting the tiers of the devil and god using food and cooks as metaphors to angels and demons. 

OLIO - Proverb Initial Research/Thoughts - 20/10/2016

“God sends food, and the devil sends cooks

Thomas Deloney. Quoted from “A. Borde Dietary of Health XI” (1542)

From the proverb I was given I noted down the key words I believe are important for ideas and visual imagery. “God” and “Devil” associates with religion, which would suggests a conflict between good and evil. “Food” is probably the important keyword, as it could hold some symbolism. “Cooks” is most likely representing the humans’ destructive greed and destroying god’s gift (food). These are my initial thoughts of my proverb though this may change during the development of my ideas for the illustration.

“GOD sends meat, but the devil sends cooks. Bad cooks spoil the food God has provided.”

 “Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs”. Jennifer Speake. OUP Oxford, 24 Sep 2015 

A more simplified version to explain what the proverb actually means from the book “Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs”. The breakdown of the saying is rather straightforward and nothing too complex from what I had found. It appears the proverb is just a simple saying about consequences (?), though I’m not too certain as this is the only other information I can find on the saying.

The origin of the saying is from a scholarly article “A. Borde Dietary of Health XI” by Thomas Deloney about health and dietary. The issue of Health and diet can be an idea as a theme for my illustration, combining the ideas of symbolism with health and food.

After looking into the proverb in more detail I gathered all the key words that I think will be crucial to the design ideas for my illustration:

God

Devil

Food

Cooks

Religion

Symbolism

Health

Kitchen Appliances (metaphor for the cooks) Animals/Vegetables (metaphor for food)

Demons (metaphor for the cooks)Renaissance

From these words I will generate ideas that will show some connection with the themes, primarily with symbolism, food and the ‘good vs evil’ context as there are probably the strongest themes out of all to go forward with. In terms of research of these themes I will be looking into artworks and stories from the Renaissance, or other religious poems to see what kind of visual imagery I can create (in terms of composition and colour) for my given proverb. 

Editorial Workshop - 06/10/2016

06/10/2016

The exercise of creating an illustration of a chosen news article and to work at a professional standard (meeting deadlines) wasn’t really a difficult task to be honest, as I do work to meet deadlines by prioritising my time management. I limit myself with what I would use to create my illustration in order to challenge myself, such as using a limited colour palette and be loose with my drawing, rather than spending a lot of time putting in details and polishing it, as I would usually have when I create artworks. This allows me to approach things from a different angle and it does shine a new perspective for me when it comes to illustrate the drawing for the exercise.

I had chosen the article that focuses on the natural disaster that struck Haiti, with disastrous floods and torrential rain. I chose to illustrate my drawing where it visually communicates the sadness and the destructive nature in order to stay relevant to the article as an illustration. Illustrating with limited colour palette as a way to challenge myself wasn’t as difficult as I thought, this is probably due to the fact that the idea of my illustration (in terms of the visuals) was a simple concept of a child standing in an area where it’s all desolate from the storm, which allows the use of limited colour palette to be easily optimised for use in the illustration.

I had spent roughly over an hour on my illustration and this is the result. The composition was kept simple and the use of limited colour palette was actually effective than I thought, limiting to the colours of black and grey, with a hint of blue. This may not look as polished compared to artworks I do which would take several hours or more, but the simplicity in its composition and visuals does brings in the tone very nicely. I only gave myself an hour to illustrate as a way to test my skills and to illustrate within a given timeframe, as deadlines could range from a few days, to a 24 hour/next day deadline. This would also allow me to see how much I could get done in an hour or so, to see if I am capable of such task, though I would say I would need more practice in order to get better at producing work quickly, however such skill to create artworks in very short time span will take time to master.

Reading the notes left on my work after exchanging feedback are comments regarding the visual imagery being conveyed through effective use of limited colour palette combined with a simple composition.

Feedback consists of –

“I like the limited palette and subtle colour blend.”

“Simple but effective, limited palette works well. Nice composition.”

“Very powerful imagery. Really sets the mood for the scene. Beautiful.”

“Great colours. Fits Perfectly.”

“Dark and decay, I like it! Great use of texture and shade.”

From these feedbacks are positive comments and there seems to be no constructive criticism (which I would of liked to see from the comments) that would of helped me to see what I could of have improve or change.

The exercise has taught me a few things about approaching things professionally as if we were working in the real world within the art industry, and that there’s not really an excuse to leave things at the last minute. I believe critical thinking is really important, since you don’t have a lot of time (depending on the brief and deadline) and must prioritise what’s important and manage your time accordingly, as short deadlines do exists.