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! 

Week 2 - Generating characters using shapes

Okay so characters play a fairly large part within Illustration, you see them everywhere whether it is in children's books, advertising campaigns or food packaging, the lost goes on.
I believe that characters are one of the best visual cue's to use within illustration because of the endless design outcomes.

A lot of my characters are usually made using basic shapes as my starting points. I do this for a few reasons, firstly it makes my characters look a little more quirky and edgy, secondly it allows me to explore and push the boundaries of basic anatomy.


For this session I wanted to get everyone using cut out card shapes as characters and objects, this helped to visualize the shape of objects as they could add and take away bits of paper to make new shapes. Below is my example that I worked with to show the process of layering.

Okay so initially I gave each student an A3 sheet which had 3 boxes on it. Each box had a different objective. 1st box was an object, 2nd was a famous building or structure and the 3rd was a dinosaur. Each had to be created using cut out shapes and a range of different cards. They were also allowed to draw on additional features with pen.


Here are some of the outcomes.

Look at my sad excuse for a pineapple... I do like it though! 

Up next, the animals of the not so conventional ark! 

First session, turn up, warm up and Nigel (explanation below)

Okay cool, so after the tour was taken, everyone went into the studio where the teach AKA Jack Viant then delivered an introduction to himself and the course.

The first session gave everyone a chance to loosen up and sort of introduce themselves to everyone else. The first initial task was for everyone to write down their favorite animal on a bit of paper, then chaos materialized as I then told everyone to switch their bits of paper around and draw someone else's animal. As you could imagine, riots nearly broke loose, it took a small army and a tank to separate the masses.

The slight exaggeration aside, the reason behind this was to push people out of their comfort zones from the get go. We then continued to mix around the animals and draw back on top until we started creating weird chimeras.

Here are some of the outcomes.

We then went on to draw a memory or something that brings us some joy, students were then encouraged to pass them around and try to depict what was going on within the illustration. This tested the students initial ability to tell a story in their own absence.

And here is my memory, the rocky road to Dublin.

Oh and by the way, in case you are wondering who "me" or "I" is.
I am Jack Viant, wearer of bow ties and freelance illustrator. 

A new Beginning - Illustration short courses!

The first post of many! This blog will follow the adventures of illustration students on a 10 week course at the Plymouth college of Art.

The course began on the 12th of January 2016, like a scene from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, the new arrivals were welcomed by a little man in a purple suit jacket. His socks were higher than the heavens and his hair was slicked back far past the Isle of Man. He had a gentle voice when greeting the students, a voice not to dissimilar to a young Tiny Tim. God bless his soul...

He frolicked about like a honey bee in the summer as he showed the students around the vast building that was to be their base of study for the next 10 weeks! 

After an introduction like that, you'd be a fool not to follow this blog along,

updates to come which will cover the lessons that have already happened! Stay tuned!