Client Visuals

My Choice of two illustrations are

 A Phil Hackett Illustration for Waitrose weekend, Jenny Agutter's My Childhood home article and

Jason Ford's Illustration, above, one of a set for Waitrose Kitchen magazine - Food for thought article. May 2013
Completely misreading or just generally missing the point of the exercise,  I set about drawing a facsimile of each illustration double size. I 'll include them here as they took some time (not much) to do.

Having re-read the exercise text and having realised my misunderstanding of what was required. I looked afresh at it. Curiously having gone through the process of drawing the two illustrations in detail meant that I could approach it in a different way. I decided to draw the visuals from memory rather than have them in front of me.

I chose to experiment with an app on my Ipad called Procreate. 

Here are the results;

I opted to use a dark 'canvas' setting to mimic the original design idea.

Recalling the image lends itself to creating visuals of the key components only. Essential to outlining the design ideas.

We could zoom in and as long as the viewer sees the bed mosquito net and the dog on the bed plus some of the butterflies and mosquitoes out side then you still get the sense of the whole illustration.

Equally the same can be said of my other illustration choice, handled in the same way

The concept is much simpler so creating the visual is much more straight forward. Then focusing on the central theme by following the eyes of the figure..

The image reads much the same even with a lot of the detail stripped out

VIEWPOINT

Working on my theme selection of - Workshop
I collected an ensemble of tools and other associated items that you might find in a workshop.
And set about with the arrangement and recording using a digital camera, here are the results in a 'contact sheets' style I originally printed them in this format for ease of comparison but they look quite good.

The close ups and zoomed in frames work best, more dramatic some how not as discarded looking as viewing the whole scene particularly from above. The zoomed in viewpoints lend a kind of feel that the tools are ready to be used, have more immediacy.

For my sketched viewpoints, as suggested, I used two 'L' shaped pieces of mount board and two clothes pegs. Oh and a handy cardboard box to hold the frame in the right position. At times I found that staring through the frame caused blurring and double images of the frame sides. I tried to counter this by closing one eye which had its own drawbacks...
anyway these are are my viewpoint sketches.

I liked the triangular format early on, I feel it lends itself to describing possible functions of the workshop and of the geometric shapes you might work on or with in a workshop, furniture, pitched rooves in construction that type of thing.

My original idea was that I wouldn't stage the group too much, to create a more random 'natural' placement,
but through the process it was obvious that this wouldn't necessarily produce interesting shapes and or angles etc from any particular viewpoints. So changing viewpoints did make me focus on this aspect of the arrangement and modify my earlier thoughts.

More from the sketch book. Focusing on some triangular aspects.

At this point I have moved some of the items

 On reflection the tall narrow view is, for me, the one that stands out. When considering which view conveyed the idea of 'Workshop'  the use of a close up of the tools used etc  would be adequate but the added space above and past the objects illustrates the workshop as a place that goes beyond the immediate view.

 The scaled up sketched image. I discarded the L shaped card drew an upscaled frame and allowed my self to go slightly past the frame. After completing the sketch I realised that it was too wide so redrew it and erased the parts that fell outside. Unfortunately too large for the scanner so scanned in two parts and PS'd together.

Giving Instructions

Making a cup of Tea - Without a tea pot (shock horror)

Initial ideas
Each stage to appear to be on individual cards laid in order from top of the page to the bottom, slightly over laid or touching.

My proposed contents of the sequence cards:

Some other layout ideas

Laid over a 'steam' pattern

At the top of  steam jets above a kettle

A variation on the 'steam' idea

Whilst thinking of ways to show the instruction stages with a steam background and thinking about words associated with tea latched on to - tea time - hence a tea making clock...

I quite like this idea and see the multiple hands being of varying length or tonally gradated to indicate the order of the instructions.

Still exploring other ideas I then considered the question - what goes with tea - cake, a cake stand and I can make it multi - tiered with an instruction on each.

I quite like this idea too - but on reflection I could see a flaw. Like a cake on a stand you can make your selection from any level, perhaps this is also the case in respect of the order of the sequence. The order does not appear obvious.

Alternative ideas are sugar cubes in a block with an instruction on each - this may have problems with order. I also contemplated using actual teabags each with an image applied to it; in some form.

But I decided to concentrate on the clock face idea.

Giant Teabag

 This is a new improved mock up of the intended design, the thought crossed my mind that the clock face could be a round teabag with the hours added but having played about with some images I decided that it added nothing and certainly detracted from the idea of conveying instructions.

This is my completed piece. I feel that the clock face idea lends itself as a natural way for the viewer to read the order of the instructions. I reinforced this by slightly overlapping each image in the sequence. I considered dropping the clock hands from the piece but found that without them the clock lost some significance and the sense of movement you get with them adds to the notion of a sequence to follow. 

Each image was drawn with an artpen and the steam cloud outlines were then added. I cut them in to individual sections with a scalpel following the outer contours of the steam. Then pasted them onto the clock face I had previously added the extra hands to using photoshop. The tone that forms the background is by virtue of the scanning process. I liked the effect so kept it.