Leonardo Da Vinci Research

Leonardo Da Vinci is one of the most well known painters in the world. As well as being a highly talented painter he was extremely clever and first invented a lot of things that we use every day such as helicopters and bicycles.  



Born: April 15, 1452 in Vinci, Italy
Died: May 2, 1519
Movement: High Renaissance

• Leonardo Da Vinci is one of the best known painters in the world with his legendary works including the Mona Lisa, The Vitruvian Man an the Last Supper.
• Da Vinci wrote in the opposite direction to normal meaning that if you wanted to read it you would need a mirror. 
• He was obsessed with Anatomy of the human body and became an expert by creating hundreds of  drawings of human bodies.
• Da Vinci was not only a painter he was also an inventor, scientist, mathematician, engineer, writer,musician and much more. He was very, very talented.    
• There are a lot of theories surrounding Da Vinci's painting 'Mona Lisa.' for example some people believe that it is actually a self portrait.
• According to face recognition software the Mona Lisa is 83% happy, 9% Disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry.
• Da Vinci first invented many things such as a parachute, a helicopter, a diving suit, a giant crossbow, the bicycle and many many other things. 
• Leonardo Da Vinci was very tall, his height was 6 foot 4 and a half !

Image taken from: http://galleryhip.com/leonardo-self-portrait-drawing.html

Salvador Dali Activity page

For Salvador dali's activity page I thought it would be fun to create an activity where the reader designs their own crazy moustache for Salvador as he was very well known for his bizarre moustache creations.

I started off with a line drawing that I had created. I then erased the moustache in photoshop and added a title and some text so the reader knows what to do. I decided to keep the image un coloured to allow the reader to add their own colours if they want. 

Frida Kahlo Activity page

When thinking about what kind of activity page to create for Frida Kahlo the idea came to me to create a drawing of Frida with a flower crown that could be finished off by the person reading the book. This activity seemed very fitting as Frida Kahlo wore a lot of pretty floral headwear.

 I started off with a drawing that I had previously done but not used. I then opened it up in photoshop and erased the flower crown and started off a new one to give the reader a bit of an idea of what to do. I also decided to keep the drawing as line work only so the reader can also choose to colour in the image their self if they choose too. I then finally added a title to the page and text to inform the reader of the instructions of the activity. Overall I am happy with how this activity Page turned out and I will follow a similar format with my other activity pages but I will change the activity making it appropriate to the artist that it relates too. 

Van Gogh's Starry Night Development

I wanted to include some of the artists work and to be able to do this I will have to create my own versions of the artists paintings. As I am including a fact about the Starry Night painting by Vincent Van Gogh I thought it would be fitting to start off with that. I started off by looking at his painting and mapping out where all of the main lines are. I did this in black to follow the format of all of the other drawings in the book. 

When I was happy with that I decided to add hints of colour underneath. I started off with yellow as that was one of the more predominant colours within his original painting. I chose a shade that I liked, I decided to choose a more contemporary mustard yellow to add to the modern feel of the book. 

I finally added some blue strokes to finish off the painting. I wanted to keep it very loose and modern to give it a bit of a twist and make it feel more fitting with the rest of the book. Again I chose a more subdued shade of blue to complement the yellow. I also added a little bit of dark blue to darken up some areas of the image. 

Overall I am happy with how this image turned out and I think it will go nicely with the rest of the images in the book. 

Salvador Dali Development

I started off drawing Salvador Dali by looking at photos and old videos that he was in. I liked that he always seemed to be pulling funny faces on most of the photos that I found of him. I wanted to capture these poses in the drawing that I did of him. I started off with a few sketches, as soon as I decided what I wanted the drawing to look like I took it into photoshop and completed it digitally.  

Initial sketches 

When I was happy with my initial sketches I scanned in the drawing that i wanted to used and cleaned it up in photoshop. I changed the levels to make the whites white rather than cream and the blacks more black.

I then started to build up layers of colour until I was happy. I started off with a solid base colour for the skin tone. 

 I then added shading to the cheeks and coloured the eyes and lips.

I then proceeded to colour in the hair and clothing I stuck with darkish grey colours as I feel this worked as a nice masculine  colour scheme.

 To complement the dark green eyes and add a pop of colour I coloured the tie in burgundy. I think this worked out quite well with the rest of the image. I then decided that the image looked a bit strange and realised it was because there was no shading on the neck so I coloured it a bit darker than the face colour. I think that this worked out well and finished off the image nicely.

Frida Kahlo development and colour

To improve and further develop my drawing of Frida Kahlo I started off  by putting in into photoshop and cleaning up the lines using the levels tool. I made the backgrounds white and the lines more black. I then decided to change the head dress a little bit because I liked a different one more, I did this digitally and it worked really well.

Once I was happy with the outline I decided to start colouring the image. I wanted to use tasteful modern colours. To help me out with the colours I went onto the Colour lovers website and chose some nice dusty pastel colours for the flowers I used this as a starting point, I then added my own colours that worked with the palette. I think it worked out nicely and the colours work well together.

I then went on to colour the hair and eyebrows, I just decided on using a dark grey colour so none of the detail in the hair was lost. I also coloured the cheeks and the lips in a dusty pink to fit in with the colour scheme. 

I finally added the skin colour. For this I decided to colour pick Frida Kahlo's actual skin tone on photoshop from a photograph to make sure I got a close enough match to her actual skin tone. It worked out matching really well with the other colours that I had chose.

I am happy with how the colour turned out and I think I will stick with this format for my other illustrations. I will now clean up my other illustrations and continue colouring them, I will also create a frame to go around the illustrations. 

Frida Kahlo initial drawings

I want to draw all of the artists in the same style line drawings. I will then colour them digitally. Here are the original drawings that I did of Frida Kahlo. I think that the first and last drawing  work well but I'm not too keen on the second drawing, I think that the face shape is too round because of how I have drawn the jaw line. I do like the head dress on the second drawing so I might end up combining it with the first drawing. As these are just initial sketches the final image might change slightly from what goes into the book. The next step is to clean the final drawing up on photoshop and colour it digitally.