Assignment Two

Happy Accidents 

Research

Justin Sutcliffe 

Photographed exactly how they appear. Sutcliffe proves that facial expressions can be found almost anywhere. And once they are found, it's up to the viewer to decide who they are. For this assignment, that will be me. 

Sutcliffe encourages me to look in the most unlikely places for my characters, as well as my setting for the scene. 

Keith Larson 

Takes the shape and body of the item and brings it to life as an animated character. 

The colours are exaggerated, bright. Features are tweaked to produce a slick character with detailed features. 

Cartoonish and animated, he brings life in a fun but detailed way. 

Sean Charmatz

Los Angeles Animator, Sean Charmatz turns everyday, ordinary and unremarkable things into quirky characters by adding in facial expressions with a black line, in more of a simplistic way to Larson. 

Simple and easy in their appearances, such emotion, frustration, fear and joy are created in the objects. 

A story board artist by trade, working for Disney and DreamWorks, Charmatz proves here that absolutely anything is worthy of a character, a personality. A story can be created with two eyes and a mouth.   

1. Characters...

This is the collection of sketches I made for exercise 2.6 Pareidolia: 

As I explored this exercised, I did start to characterise them in the sketches. This happened by accident, but it felt too playful not to do.

Here I took a cupboard handle, a lamp, a phone shaped money box, a bathroom razor, toilet roll, a shower, a drawer, a log bin and a glass of drink. 

Also within theses sketches are faces that appeared in the texture of the bathroom tiles. 

Revisiting these sketches, I would like to carry the razor and the toilet roll forward. The reason for this as I see them as strong characters. They become characters with just a few extra pieces, the toilet roll with the addition of the eyes and mouth. The razor transformed into a bug. 

I also like the idea of a bathroom theme. 

Character development: 

In the initial sketch of the toilet roll, the roll became a character with a tiny pencil mark for eyes and a mouth, and I really like this look. 

However, I start by playing with larger eyes, and eyes with expression. 

I also play with the idea of arms and legs. 

This is an interesting exercise. The changed features create an entirely different character. 

Returning to my initial sketch of my toilet roll character with tiny eyes and a mouth, I wonder whether my character could be duplicated? Could one toilet roll become a twin or a triplet? it is common to see toilet rolls piled together in a bathroom. 

For fun, I place the bottom toilet roll with a sad face, whilst the other two seem to be having fun on top. 

I continued with the triplets. This time I played with the idea of them being childlike triplets. 

Continuing with the tiny eyes and mouth, it's surprising how expression still appears in their faces, with just the tiniest touches for features. 

This time I also bought back the idea of arms. Could the arms sometimes appear, in playful movements, and sometimes not? 

I'm really enjoying the triplets at this stage. A strong character choice. They have similar simple, yet expressive features as the work of Sean Charmatz. 

I revisit the idea of the bathroom razor. 

In my initial sketches the razor is a bug. I explore the idea of the razor with a different look. 

This time the razor appears more like a person, tall with long arms and legs. 

The return of the bug. 

This time I added small, millipede like legs. 

I continued with the idea of the Sean Charmatz, small facial features. 

The addition of a small small creates a very cute looking character. Harmless. 

The bug with antennae, googly eyes, a razor mouth. Quite alien in appearance. 

Long careless legs. 

Would the triplet toilet rolls make friends with this creature? Is he playful enough, or odd looking? 

I thought about adding a new character and looked around the bathroom for ideas. 

Could a toothbrush be a character, the yellow bristles look like hair. I start to play with the idea of adding a face to the hair. 

I position the face in various places, changing the look of the toothbrush. 

I love the spider like character of sketch 4. Facial features appearing on top of the hair. 

Could he be scuttling around a bathroom scene? 

Additional character ideas taken from the bathroom. 

The steel silver elements of the toilet look like eyes, and the lid open appears like a mouth, wide open. 

I play with the idea of adding shoes with laces. 

As much as I can make sense of the character here, I think it's too messy and not obvious enough to the viewer. It just looks like a toilet, missing a character. 

I try again, this time using the idea of a traditional toilet with a pull chain. 

This works. The sliver circular elements appear as eyes. A much clearer character. 

I make the eyes a little wider, adding dots to make them appear as if they are looking downwards. 

The addition of a small, smiling mouth brings the toilet to life. 

2. Backgrounds

Using a view finder, I revisit marks I have made in my sketchbook. Starting with exercise 2.4 'Drawing with teabags'. 

As my characters are bathroom based, I keep this in mind as I explore ideas for a scene. 

An etching of bathroom tiles in crayon. 

These marks are a true idea of the texture of the bathroom wall. I will photocopy these marks and carry them forward. They could be used to build my characters into the bathroom. 

Bubble affect shapes using watercolour, applied with a potato. 

There are thick areas of colour. The ring of colour are blurred, there is no definite shape. Random patterning. However, I will photocopy these marks also and see if they fit within a scene. 

A more circular, subtle bubble shape in blue watercolour using a sliced courgette. 

The shape is defined. The centre of the circles are clear of colour. A very neat and accurate bubble shape and texture. The perfect mark making for water in a bathroom scene. I will photo copy these marks and try to use them in building my scene. 

I revist the scenes created in exercise 2.5 'Drawing with objects'. 

Could I place my bathroom characters in any of these scenes. Or are there elements I could take from the scenes here that I could cut away? 

Each of these sketches contain a piece of a real object. 

I will colour photocopy these sketches and see if I can cut them up/utilise them as I go.

As my characters initially appeared as accidents whilst exploring pareidolia, I decided to photocopy my sketchbook pages a number of times, so that I could cut them up to build a scene. 

At this stage I have no set plan. 

I have my characters. I have textures, mark making, and colour photo copies of sketches that contain real objects. I will now work to manually cut up the copies below and begin to create a scene. 

As my characters are simple, I have decided to manually draw them each time onto paper to include. I will use crayon, pencils and felt tips to draw the characters. There are all mediums I have used throughout the sketching process, that have worked well to create playful characters. I will then cut my characters out and place them within the photocopied mark making. 

3. The final stage

So this part is going to be spontaneous. 

I have no immediate plan, however I do have a bathroom theme. 

Working on a large A1 sheet of white paper, I divided the page in two. 

Working to a landscape format I began building the scene, working from the background initially. 

I covered the landscape with the colour photocopy of the crayon etching of my bathroom tiles at home. This created a brown, rough wall. 

I then hand drew the triplet toilet rolls, the razor and the spider like toothbrush, my five characters. 

I use the photocopies of the perfume shelf. Would it be a fun idea to place the characters around the perfume? 

I also have the courgette bubbles, perhaps bubbles from an over spilling bath. 

My steps: 

Step 1. The background tiles. I cover the sheet with the mark making photocopies. 

Step2. The courgette bubbles. I add a small section of bubbles, glue this on top of the etching tiles. This gives the impression of there being a bubble bath in the room, over spilling with bubbles. 

Step 3. The triplet toilet rolls. I want them to appear as if they are getting up to mischief, having fun whilst no one is looking!

Step 4. The perfume bottles lined up as if on a shelf. 

Step 5. The razor, peeping out from behind the perfume bottles. 

Step 6. The toothbrush at the very front  of the scene, scuttling along the shelf. 

Illustration 1

The idea of an over spilling bubble bath, leads me into moving the characters to the bath tub!

Step 1. I use  photocopies of the Radox wrapper from my sketch book and glue to the page. 

Step 2: The bubbles. I use the photocopies of the courgette bubble and glue them to the page to give the impression of a full bubble bath. 

Step 3. I add the triplets and the razor to the bath tub. Again I want them to be having a brilliant time in secret. As they are in deep water, I add the arm extensions to one of the rolls, to characterise the scene further and create the illusion of the characters being in deep water. 

Step 4. I glue further courgette bubbles on top of the characters, so the characters appear partly submerged in water. 

Step 5. I add the toothbrush to be side of the bath, in between the taps. Looking on with happiness. 

Illustration 2

Reflections

Accidental, unplanned, fun and playful are all words I would choose to describe this short journey. 

What went well? 

The overall thought processes of stepping away from what I thought I knew, drawing on a piece of paper and taking a leap into textures and mark making. Looking at marks to use to form a scene is an entirely new concept. 

The overall assignment felt a little too new and definitely stretched my mind. However the step by step guide really did help break the assignment down, building it bit by bit. 

Using Justin Sutcliffe, Keith Larson and Sean Charmatz as reference gave me the confidence to take the plunge into this assignment using gentle expressions, taking what was real and characterising them in subtle ways. 

The character element was really fun. Having carried forward some ideas that were planted in exercise 2.6 Pareidolia, I was able to develop these further. My favourite characters are the triplet toilet rolls. I took one character and tripled them to create mischief. Also the inclusion of arms at times added movement and further expression into the scene. 

I could have included the toilet as a character too, however I struggled to fit such a big character into the scene too, the razor, toilet rolls and toothbrush are all very small in comparison.  I think with planning, all of the characters could have been bought together into one scene. With no plan, rather spontaneous action, I did what I could using the space and materials to hand. On reflection, this did limit my scenes. 

I utilised my sketchbook and used coloured copies of previous sketches, using them again in different ways. This was resourceful and easy, cutting up what I needed. 

Would could I do differently? 

If I were to develop the characters further, I could use actual material to create them. I could study the texture of each and use elements to recreate this on the page. For example the toilet roll could actually be made of toilet roll, the bristles of the toothbrush could be made up of real bristles. 

With planning, a larger scene could be created. Capturing an entire bathroom including larger characters, the toilet and the shower. 

Perhaps the characters could also be taken out of the bathroom and placed somewhere entirely different, a coffee shop or clothes shop, on the move. Perhaps even a story board could be created. 

PART TWO REFLECTIONS: 

What were the main challenges you encountered when working with unusual drawing techniques and how did you overcome them?

Expanding my mind to understand this new ways of working. This part of the course has pushed me way outside of my comfort zone it has felt rather uncomfortable along the way. I have tried to embrace this by taking small steps in, trying, and pushing forward a little. 

Where I felt most worried, I moved away from working on a large page and bought myself a small A5 sketchbook. Working smaller really boosted my confidence as I felt more control, less on a page but more pages of it really worked for me. 

Now you have drawn with unusual materials, what techniques or materials are you going to use within your next sketchbook?

I particularly loved the effectiveness of creating real characters out of real objects in exercise 2.6 Pareidolia. This was excellent for expanding my imagination. 

The marking making exercises were also fantastic at collecting a range of marks, created by a range of items. I could never have known that a courgette could make the most accurate and realistic bubble affect before this part of the course. 

Marks can be flexible too, photo copied and used multiple times. Cut up and layered up. 

Exercise 2.5 'Drawing with objects' was the most enjoyable for me. I embraced this exercise and found that when repurposes these sketches for the assignment, they photocopied really well too. 

How did you find moving from observed drawings towards using ideas and more of an imaginative approach?

A stretch, I do feel like I'm working in an area my brain hasn't quite caught up with yet! I am pushing myself to embrace this new and imaginative way of working, however I am aware that I am only making baby steps at the moment. I do feel reluctant to jump, I think fearing what the outcome might be. Everything has been rather neat to date, and I do need to push away from this. 

What have you learned about drawing quickly that you can take forward when you look at drawing people in part three?

I have learned to keep the line moving on the page. Limit sketching time to 3 or 5 minutes. 

Concentrate of shapes and create the movement movement, focus on positive and negative spaces, less on the detail. Capture as much of the essence as possible. 

Which of the illustrators mentioned in this section work did you most enjoy looking at and why?

Saul Steinberg. Steinberg uses bright colours, that are also so delicate. His illustrations are beautiful and so full. 

Steinberg uses such imagination, his drawings are quirky and different. They are captivating because they contain so much, like a story playing out on the page. 

If you haven’t joined a sketchbook circle yet do you feel ready to join one?

I am struggling to gain an real understanding at this point, as so I am struggling with confidence. However to overcome this I will look to join an Instagram circle as soon as possible. 

References: 

Sean Charmatz Instagram @sean_charmatz 

Keith Larson  Instagram @thefaceswithinplaces

Justin Sutcliffe www.justinsutcliffe.com