Week 1 Design Principles Essay

Okay, so this next post is a little different to what I’ve been doing so far with this blog. As part of my course I have to do a 300-500 word essay giving a critical commentary on 2 of the 5 key principles covered in my Tuesday lecture, and post it on my blog. It looks like this is going to be a weekly thing too. Not the direction that I was expecting to be going with this blog, and my essay skills are a bit rusty, but we’ll see how we go. It could be interesting. Here’s the essay:

The first principle that I’m looking at is the idea of working by hand, and thinking on the page. Simply put, this is the process of getting my ideas down in hand-drawn images, rather than text or digital form. That is not to say that I have to draw with a conventional drawing tool such as a pen or pencil – I could use collage for example – but the key is that it is by hand. This process gives you a physical connection between your hand, eye, and creative right brain, which in turn allows the latter to operate more efficiently. This in turn results in a better environment for creativity and therefore idea generation.

There are several ideas here, and unfortunately I'm not sure what all of them are, but included is his idea for a flying machine.

A good example of an artist that thinks with images is Leonardo da Vinci. He has filled hundreds of sketchbooks with his drawings of ideas that he's had. There is certainly text in there too, but they are his notes to himself about parts of the ideas he's drawn. He was incredibly creative, and had scientific ideas that were centuries ahead of their time. While this obviously cannot be attributed merely to drawing by hand, he does nevertheless make a prime example of someone that follows this first principle.

The second principle that I’m looking at stems from the first: the idea of drawing as a visual language. This is more to do with the communication of my ideas than the generation of them, however. Visual language enables us to convey both greater quantities and more complex information far more effectively than with text. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This may or may not be exactly true, but a picture is certainly much better at explaining complex ideas in ways that make them easier to understand. As a visual practitioner, this is especially important when communicating my ideas to others, as it is the best way of explaining short of giving a tour my mind. It is also important for my own reference, as it means I can recreate earlier experiences in my mind far more easily.

There are many examples of ways in which this principle is used. Probably the most prevalent is in instruction manuals. It would be a very lengthy process to describe (without images) the stages in completing a Lego kit.

Imagine trying to follow a step saying 'Attach the flat grey 2-by-12 brick to the top of the flat grey 2-by-2 brick with the nozzles on the sides so that the 2-by-2 brick is as far to one end as possible without the knobs being exposed and the nozzles are perpendicular to the 2-by-12 brick'.

Dragon design update

I did want to work on some ideas for the human body of this guy before I uploaded my sketches, but I now have uni work to do so I'll put up what I've done and come back to this later. I normally work in biro, as it allows me to get ideas down faster because I don't get hung up trying to get details exactly right as I do with pencil. I like the intensity you get from ink as well. I was having problems with ink here though because I need it to look like a dragon, and not a wolf, and the biro gives it a furrier texture. I did want to try out oil pastels, but I realised that it wouldn't work in the long run, as you can't work very small with oil pastels and I will be sending the final design to my sister on a postcard. Instead I've used water colour pencils, and I think it's turned out quite well, though I need to find a way to integrate the facial hair better, and it would be nice if I could make the surface look smoother.

Chinese dragons

So my sister saw the doodles I drew, and wants me to draw something similar for her! She's asked for a drawing of a guy with a Chinese dragon for an arm. It's not what my doodle was of, but I admit that it does look rather serpentine. I'm not particularly fond of the traditional Chinese image of dragons - I've always thought they look a bit silly, and not as impressive as the more western style, but it's what she wants so I'll run with it. I've had to look up a couple of pictures of Chinese style dragons for a starting point, as I'm not used to drawing them. The first place I looked was volume 2 of Fantasy Art magazine (which I totally recommend if you're into fantasy drawing, whether or not you can use digital media, which the magazine focuses on), as it contains the only image I've ever seen of a Chinese dragon that I actually like:

Celestial Party, by Amber Hill. Her website is vantid.deviantart.com, which I recommend taking a look at.

 
There are a variety of representations out there, but they all seem to have a lot of facial hair including really long strands of whiskers coming from the snout (silly looking things I say!). Some of them seem to have the facial structure of a different animal, and a scan through wikipedia showed that some specific dragons in Chinese mythology do indeed have the faces of different animals, including that of a human. To make things a bit more interesting for me therefore, I've decided to use the face of a wolf for my drawing. I could pretend that the reason is because wolves are similarly majestic, etc. but really it's just because I really, really like wolves. Initial sketches to follow.

Doodles

So I've finished my induction week of VisCom illustration - woo! Unfortunately most of it has been going over information we've already been given, or could have been covered in a short email, but that's all over now and we start properly this week. Fun times! Anyway, here are some doodles I was doing on Friday. They're pretty basic, but they've given me some ideas I'd like to try out. Thinking of making a graphic novel at some point, but at the moment I only have ideas for this character and not a story or anything.

Trying to get the pose I was imagining for the guy above. Not quite there but pretty close.