Drawing

WEEK – 1
For the first drawing lecture we were told to sketch something that reminded us of our hometown.
Being a resident of Mumbai, I decided to sketch some of its highlights for me.
The highlights being : local food, local trains, unpredictable rains, traffic, fashion street and tall skyscrapers.
This reminded me of the many things that I not only dislike but also like about my city.

WEEK – 2
This class was a foray into the concepts of proportion, posture, movement, gesture, flow and emotion.
First I drew a general stick figure and then started to draw the muscles/body. The last step was to draw the clothes, accessories, etc.
We did live sketching as everyone took turns posing for others. We were given only 5 minutes hence the sketch had to be fast and not very detailed.
This improved my speed, strokes and understanding of human figures.

WEEK – 3
We were told to bring 10 photos of day and night landscapes, 5 of each.
I selected one photo of both day and night and started to sketch it.
We were told to use different textures to convey day and night by just using a pencil.
This helped me improve my understanding of spaces, light and shade.

WEEK – 5
This week we were asked to bring flowers and leaves.
I drew 1 flower and 2 leaves and filled them in with stippling, shading and hatching respectively.
This improved my understanding of nature and its imperfections and beauty.
It also helped me with my shading as I was not very confident with it. I could depict the various textures of the petals and leaves.

WEEK – 6
This class we were introduced to the concept of perspective.
We started off with one-point perspective. In one-point perspective, all the lines are generating from a single point.
Then we moved on to two-point perspective. In this, lines generate from two different points.
Perspective drawing may seem like a simple enough task when it comes to one-point and two-point but it can get confusing once a lot many lines start forming.

ONE-POINT PERSPECTIVE

WEEK – 7
3-point perspective has 3 vanishing points i.e lines generate from 3 different points.
This type of perspective is usually used to give an aerial view either of objects or a landscape.
4-point perspective is a slightly different concept. It has bulging lines from two points which look very much like a magnetic field around a magnet.
This perspective is used to show fish eye view or a parking mirror view.

WEEK – 8
This week I made a color palette for a picture I clicked.
I first drew a 1×1 cm grid on my sheet and then started to recognise the pure colors in my picture.
Then I made the shades and tones of those colors.
For some colors I had to add white, some black and for some I added black and white to make a dull color.
This was a tedious process but it looked very neat in the end. It made me more precise with my brush strokes.

WEEK – 9
A storyboard is a graphic organizer in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence.
This week, I did some research on artists and animators whose work is recognised all over the world.
After going through all of their work I decided that I wanted to take inspiration from a long time favorite animator of mine – Nathan Pyle.
Nathan Pyle is the creator of a webcomic series called ‘Strange Planet’ which features aliens discussing banal human experiences has gained a lot of popularity on social media.

WEEK – 10
In this class I started to work on my story.
My story revolves around people who are getting bullied. Being bullied can be an alienating feeling. You feel out of place and don’t feel like you fit in.
That is why I think that an alien will be apt for my story. I also though that an alien would be more suitable as it would be gender neutral.
My character named ‘Popo’ faces bullying in the forms of cyber, verbal and physical bullying.
This is a story of how it deals with these problems by sometimes taking the high road and by sometimes fighting back.

WEEK – 11
This class I started working on my sketches for my character.
My character is an alien and even though i’m taking inspiration from an artist I didn’t want it to be same. I wanted my character to look different and stand out.
I wanted to design a character that looked weird but also relateable at the same time.
Nathan Pyle’s animations are very light-hearted and that’s how I wanted my designs to be.

WEEK – 12
For this week, I started making the storyboard for my zine.
A storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing.
This storyboard helped me understand the flow of my story better and make any changes that I thought were necessary.

WEEK – 13
A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process.
In some design workflow models, creating a prototype is the step between the formalization and the evaluation of an idea.
This class, I started making the sketches for my prototype.
Prototyping my zine helped me come up with the color palette and understand the proportions of my character and the background better.

WEEK – 14
For this week’s class, I completed my prototype and started working on my final zine.
For my zine, I decided to use watercolor paper and do the rendering with watercolor.
This zine was in the format of a booklet instead of an accordion which I made in imaging.
I opted for watercolors for the background and poster colors for my character as I wanted my background to be light and the alien to stand out.

WEEK – 15
This week was the review week.
Making the zine was a tedious and meticulous job. I made mistakes but I learned how to fix them.
I was very happy and satisfied with how my zine turned out to be.

Published by Tanvi Deshpande