pantry shelf tour (video of my line art food shelves)
I have begun to explore the idea of interactive illustration, and how I can turn a flat illustration into a physical object that can be picked up and turned around. I began by sketching some ideas for my theme of childhood, such as a little pop up room where a character could be placed or a narrative would be told. I find it helpful to write down my thoughts as I’m illustrating, which often means that my sketchbook is disproportionally writing to illustration. I tried to combat this by visually displaying each idea along with my notes. I also considered creating a long continuous illustration however the technicality of displaying and also creating a consistent piece on a large scale was too difficult. I had recently bought some pop up books, so I had drawn out a few ideas that could have a more visually 3D effect, but I wasn’t inspired by these, and wanted to come up with a different idea. I changed my method, and began thinking of something that I wanted to draw and how I could turn it 3D, rather than the other way around. I decided on making a little illustrative pantry shelf with cereal on the highest shelf, as a nod to a childhood memory where I always had to draw up a chair in order to reach the cereal cupboard.
I used a stock cube box that I had, and drew out the measurements on a piece of paper so that I could insert it cleanly into the box. I was inspired by childhood memories of Quentin Blake’s sketchy style of ink drawings, and so I knew that I wanted to draw loosely, without a pencil line or closed lines. I looked up product photos of shelves so I had some idea of composition, but mainly drew shapes that were abstracted versions of boxed products or bottles. I cut off one of the sides of the box so that it appeared to be more cupboard shaped, and stuck the completed illustration inside. I used a leftover piece of paper for the top of the box and drew a simplistic grid pattern as I didn’t want to detract from the main illustrations. I was really happy with the final result, and although I considered painting the stock cube side plain white, I quite liked the upcycled/ recycled look that it resulted in. I knew I definitely wanted to explore interactive illustration more, and do more with food shelves in relation to childhood as they were lots of fun to draw.
My next idea carried on from the cereal cupboard idea theme, except this time I wanted to turn an illustration into a 3D object, such as packaging. I wanted to keep to the small theme that I was working on, as I really enjoy working to a small scale. This time I began to create a physical cereal box that could be opened and closed. I knew I wanted to create this digitally as I could change the colours easily and print as many boxes as I needed for my shelf. In my previous workshops, I explored the idea of a 3D room, making paper technology and furniture, so I drew on what I learnt from that. I constructed a small paper shelf using cardboard and masking tape for the cereal boxes to fit in. I wanted to use a more limited colour palette so that I could swap the colours around to create different versions. As the scale of the product was to be dollhouse sized because of the childhood connotations, I made a quite illustrative design that didn’t include a lot of details and featured mainly shapes. I used a crayon texture digital brush, making five different colour versions and printed it on watercolour paper for additional texture. I hadn’t realised I was running out of printer ink, so the colours came out different than they did on my tablet, but I was happy with the final version. I definitely want to explore more 3d and interactive pieces relating to childhood in the future, and look forward to my next projects.
