Illustration Friday: Wet

I have decided as one of my personal responsive briefs to partake in the weekly illustration Friday challenge. I'll be using these briefs in a quick turnaround style to help enhance my image making skills, and improve and refine my digital methods of application.

Initially, I tried to put a time limit on making my images, as I find that in the past I have produced more effective illustrations when working under pressure. Although I had a few digital issues with productivity (as my vector skills were pretty rusty!)

Initial Ideas

• Water
• Splash
• Sea creatures
• Blackfish
• Puddles
• Swimming
• Storms
• Rivers
• Oceans
• Being splashed by something
• Throwing water
• Water mixing with other elements

Thumbnails

After making a quick mind map of 'wet' related ideas, I decided to illustrate a scenario of someone being splashed by a passing by car. I also challenged myself to using a restrictive colour palette, and to make it look like a screen print with the layers of the two colours multiplying.



Reference Imagery

I was adamant not to trace the images straight from my reference photograph, but I have a lot of difficulty in drawing cars, so unfortunately my hand drawn car doesn't look fantastic. But it was useful to look at pictures of cars splashing in puddles, and people being splashed by passing cars just to get a sense of direction in which the water is moving, and also the connection between the two.

Process

I used vectors in adobe illustrator to construct my image, and I restricted myself to using two colours. I multiplied the layers to create a colour burning and overlaying effect similar to that of a screen print. I found this difficult as I was quite out of practice of using illustrator, but I'm sure I'll soon pick it up again.

Difficulties

• My skills on illustrator were pretty rusty as I hadn't used it properly in quite a while, so it took me so long to figure out how to multiply the layers and I became quite frustrated which delayed my productivity
• I can't draw cars for the life of me, I need practice!!
• I spent longer than planned producing the image, and I don't really think that the final outcome is a piece of work that I am really proud of; maybe this is me being a perfectionist...

Evaluation

I am feeling pretty deflated about my practice in general at the minute, so maybe this image reflects that in some sense. However I am pleased that I can see a small development in the way that I am layering up images now, though I do need a lot more practice. I think that if I am going to use illustration Friday to build on my image making skills in general, I need to go back and look at the key principles of image making that I learnt last year in visual language. If I try to get into the habit of constructing my images properly then they will be more effective in a sense of communicating the theme of the week more clearly.