Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards

As it is eater and i have 2 weeks off, as well as getting on with my university work i have started reading through, and doing the drawing exercises set in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards. Hopefully this will help with my drawing skills and make it easier for me to just draw what i see. It is really good so far and i am learning a lot about the brain and how it works in relation to drawing and seeing. just thought id put this on my blog for anyone that maybe wants to learn or improve their drawing skills. The before and after pictures incredibly different i don't know if i believe them or not but i guess we will know by the time i finish the book. Here are some of the before and after drawings from the book. 

Artist research: Slinkachu

As i am photographing my illustrations i decided to look at the photo artist slinkachu (thank you too whoever left the suggestion on my desk.) Slinkachu creates images using tiny figurines of people photographed in different scenario's. The greatest thing about his images is that he incorporates real life surroundings/things found in the street and uses them as the scenery/backgrounds of his images. Its great because close up the image looks like the background is a built set but when you see images that have been taken from further away you can see how tiny the figures are and its incredible.
  I hope to do a similar thing with my drawings so looking at his work has really inspired me and helped me out with how i will photograph my work. Here are a few of my favourites. 

The tiny people from the image above this one are here ^

Cecilia Alfonso Esteves

I was looking through the book 'Little Big Books' for help with research. I came across an artist called Cecilia Alfonso Esteves she creates collage pieces for children's books. Her work is really pretty and simplistic but still effective. I especially love the colour palettes used throughout her work. 
Esteves work is created by putting cut out paper shapes together to create images and scenes, sometimes her work is flat 2D and other times her images are made with 3D components and then photographed. I thought that looking at these would help inspire my own project because i am using simple cut out characters in my images and also because i am going to be photographing my final images. I also thought that her images of scenery and backgrounds might help to inspire my work as i still have to work out most of the scenery within my illustrations. although i am planning on using real life backgrounds these images might help me decide on what to have in the backgrounds. here are a few of her images that i really like.

Photo story board

As i have almost finished all of the drawings for my book but i haven't quite sorted all of the backgrounds out yet, I decided to photograph how the scenes will look but using a plain black background for now. This is what i have so far. I have the last few scenes to draw out and the backgrounds to set up then i'm ready for the final photographs to be took. 

Artist research John P Miller

I decided to look into some retro children's book illustrators because i love how they look, they have such a unique distinctive look that is instantly recognisable as retro. I found some of J.P Miller's Illustrations and fell in love with them so i decided to do some further research into his work. J.P Miller was born in 1913 and died in 2004 he was an illustrator that illustrated many children's books. He illustrated many books from the 'Little Golden Books' series that are still pretty popular now. I love the bright block colours that are used throughout his work. I like to use paint a lot throughout my work and looking at his images is really inspiring me to try out new painting techniques and colours. His work is so iconic of the time and i think it is adorable. Here are a few pieces of his that i love.

Creepy looking Self Portrait (messing around)

As we have to create a self portrait for a class zine i decided to draw my face with quite a loose style. I wanted to keep it kind of realistic i thought this would be a good place to start just to get to know how to draw my face before trying out any particular style. I think it worked out although the way i have done the shadows makes me look like i have whiskers (oopsy). Also my lips look strange because i was pulling a weird face in the original image that i was drawing from. I think that i like the idea of me pulling a strange face in the final image. 

 Overall i'm not crazy about this image but its only a rough starting point so i'm okay with that. Im  not sure how i am going to do my final self portrait but i will keep drawing myself in different ways then ill decide what i like best. 

Artist research Nan Lawson

I found some of this artists work and fell in love with how cute and quirky it is. Nan Lawson is a self taught illustrator living and working in Los Angeles. She is well known for creating stylised portraits of  popular people and characters but she also works free lance. I think that her simplistic drawings will help out a lot with the simple characters within my story. I was drawn to her images because of the line work and colours that are used. I love how fun all of her characters are. I also think its really unique how most of her drawings have closed eyes but i think it works really well with her style, I might experiment with this idea in some of my sketchbook work. here are a few of my favourite pieces that she has created.