Saturday 12 October 2019

Droey and Co. in London

Anne Natalie has taken a few day's work in London so she has brought Droey and Tenvad along with her and they get a chance to enjoy a view of the city.


So this is a first time for me and an experimental piece I enjoyed making. I was out one night with a couple of friends who were looking to take photographs and we got the chance to look over the view, which at night I always find to be a beautiful sight. This is what made me want to do this idea, though the image used in this piece is not our own but a cityscape of London. This is inspired by the works of Victoria Wood's 'Puppy Dog Tales' and the art style of Lauren Child, for which you'll know her most for 'Charlie and Lola'. My idea was to draw the characters as a foreground looking over a photographic background.

There were a few ways I could go about this. One method could be to have made this piece entirely on computer, which would have the cleanest effect. Another way would be to have drawn the character and then scanned them onto a computer, following the first method's idea of putting together the composition digitally. The third method, the hardest and which I tried without thinking of the other methods, would be to print the photo and cut it to fit the drawing of the characters.

I was able to borrow a fellow artists' crafting knives to cut the image over a tracing made of the outlines. This way I could accurately cut the shape I wanted to without risk of cutting the drawing itself. Once this was done I carefully stuck the image on top using a glue stick.

When drawing the characters, I used my method of applying pen ink and then pencil shading so that the characters would be in fill colour, unlike what happens when you colour with just pencil and you're left with little white specs. This would allow the drawing the blend better with the photograph, while creating enough contrast to still give away that it was drawn and not a photograph.

Would you be interested in seeing more pieces like this in the future? I could use more photographic backgrounds or even use pictures to create a collaged effect such as the use of patterns, I'm happy to hear your suggestions or see how you tackle this method yourself!

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