We were tasked with a group project where we were to make a collaborative house, with each person in the group drawing two or more rooms. We were encouraged to make the rooms as quirkily shaped as possible, and to stay away from simpler square or rectangle rooms if possible. I was given two very strangely shaped ‘rooms’, one of which was more of a tunnel, however I’d never done anything like this before so I was interested to see what I could make with it. My first room was at the bottom of the house, in the basement, so there were theoretically no windows or light sources. The long wonky geometric rectangle Thing, was to lead down to the basement’s other room, of which I was not in charge of drawing. My plan for this six week module is to focus on the theme of childhood, and we had been told to incorporate our chosen theme into the rooms if possible. I considered doing a child’s bedroom, but it felt wrong to do that in the basement of a house, so I re-evaluated. I came up with a blanket fort room, because what kid wouldn’t love a huge blanket fort. I also loved Laura Carlin’s designs, as her use of stacked objects and items was so cleverly done, and I enjoyed her use of scale.
I began sketching out my design, deciding to turn the rectangle space into a sort of vertical abstract garage with piled cars, bikes, chairs, tvs and wheels that looked like they had all fallen into a crack that had opened up underneath the garage, and everything had fallen in. I wanted everything to be of a similar size, like in Laura Carlin’s designs, however I made sure that at the very bottom was the largest car as I thought it was the best use of the space, and also emphasised how ‘wrong’ the scale was. For my blanket fort, I wanted to add little stars around the fort as there were no windows or lights, and thought it could add a more childish element. I didn’t want to add the details of the blanket or cars in pencil, as I preferred to freehand that in pen so that it could be as loose as possible. I also decided to turn the wonky rectangle into a space that also had a library on top, as the long narrow line at the very top was difficult to work with. I then drew a rough guide as to the shelves where I would add the books in, and included a tiny little chair.
I really enjoyed doing the line work for both the blanket fort and the library/ garage combo, as that kind of fine line work on a small scale is exactly what I enjoyed doing, and really regretted not doing for my first workshop in illustration. I had not anticipated how long drawing each of the tiny books would take me, but after a while it did become quite therapeutic. I was able to add all of the details of the blanket fort in pen, and although I messed up a few times in repeating the pattern, it was less noticeable after completing.
I dreaded adding colour, as I do typically only work in black and white. I settled on colouring pencil as I thought that would allow me to make the colour less patchy and more solid, however I really struggled with it. I didn’t entirely dislike both final outcomes, however I didn’t think through the colour palette enough, in future I will use a more limited scheme or plan the colour out better. My line art was much stronger than my colour, however we will be doing a lecture on photoshop where I can experiment with changing the colour around a little. At Ashling’s suggestion, I also completed a version that was all colour, no line, and it was closer to the kind of childish theme that I had in mind. I think that the line versions, and the colour no line, are both stronger final images than the line no colour. I have also included the pictures of my illustrations when they were on my wall.
