Let's make some crazy typography

I loved this session, inspired by a lesson that I had in typography during my second year at uni I wanted to get everyone creating marks with unusual objects.

        

Anything you could think of, we had it on the table; broken plastic, brushes, shells, pen nibs, feathers CD's and a bunch of other bits and bobs.

The students created some awesome marks and shapes, some working really well when translated into typography. The first part was about them experimenting and finding something that they were happy working with.

The next part was about the students creating a typeface in response to particular words, the idea being that they were to "breathe" life into the words and give it some character. 

    

Some really great examples here from the students. Great workshop and a lot of fun to be had all round! 

Creating mood and atmosphere

Okay so this session was an interesting one. We were working with limited tools and colours to create a sense of mood and tone within an illustration.

I am currently trying to get some images together from the session as most of the images created took place in their own sketchbooks. Basically, the task was to select either a haunted house or carnival theme. From there they had to draw the scene in it's entirety using restricted materials; charcoal, fine liners and inks for haunted house and crayons, pastels and pens for carnival. One that task was complete they then had to zoom in on a section within the scene and draw it again, for example a ferris wheel or a room within the haunted house. When creating their scenes they had words to consider that would inform the mood, words like hazy, euphoric and colourful for carnival. 

I'll see what I can do to track down some examples from this session.
The following week's homework involved getting the students to create their own illustration in response to one of the descriptive words. Here is one for the word "abandoned". 

The animals of the not so conventional ark!

Continuing on from the character workshop I had tasked everyone with researching an extinct animal which they then had to create using the collage/shape technique. 

Unfortunately I could not get many photos of these outcomes before students took their own images home. I can assure you they are all awesome! 

Here are some examples from the session. 

Looking good!