INITIAL IDEAS/THUMBNAILS
For our final brief of the semester (within the drawing module), we were tasked with creating a 'Lockdown Diary' which would illustrate a true story of our lockdown experiences. Here are my initial ideas and thumbnails which consisted of illustrations of my daily lockdown life. I will also link my Pinterest board that I used for research & inspiration. I looked particularly at Chris Ware for inspiration on what to include in my story and how to illustrate it and I found his series 'Building Stories' extremely useful.

​www.pinterest.co.uk/ailsaellen7/uni-project-lockdown-stories/

I liked how this project was so personal to everyone - no ones story was going to be the same. I went with the concept of diary entries as I got up to quite a lot in lockdown and the days did tend to be quite different. I was fortunate enough to be working most days during these months, with many of my shifts starting at 4am due to the demand in store as a result of covid. As for many, lockdown was extremely boring, but for me I kept working, continued with my shopping addiction, kept in touch with my family (who all live in Scotland), and once the restrictions were put in place I met up with my friends. Unpopular opinion I know, but I actually enjoyed lockdown!

I produced all of my work in dip pen and ink as this is my favourite technique, and I scanned in all of my work and inserted it into a grid in photoshop. I then converted this to an indesign file and uploaded to ISSUU to produce a digital book which I will link below. I kept the same grid style throughout as this helped keep the story flowing, and I took influence from Charlie Mackesy who produces lots of ink illustrations with handwritten notes.

Final lockdown diary:

​issuu.com/ailsaforrester/docs/lockdown_diary_final

For the next section of this technical drawing element, we looked at drawing heads from different angles adding in the relevant light and tone. This is definitely a weakness of mine so I started very basic, but I can definitely see an improvement, a little bit more everyday does definitely make you better.

For this element of the drawing module we looked at perspective drawing. We looked at this a little in first semester, however I found this really useful to look a bit closer at tone, and to recap on basic perspective as I do find this a hard topic.

The second part of the module involved using pencil, coloured pencil and ink to describe tone, in a more detailed scenario. Here, I drew a scene on the train during my journey home. I used coloured pencil to illustrate my kitchen sink - I found this a bit more difficult from this angle but I was pleased with how it turned out! I also drew the second flight of stairs in my house - this was definitely a bit more challenging, I realised afterwards that the perspective is off on the stairs (the line as they come towards you) as they don't all meet the same horizon line, so I will go over this with white paint to correct. Other than that I was really impressed with how it turned out - it did take me a while but I definitely learnt a lot during this exercise!

This painting of a man on a bench I produced was inspired by Joris Munier who is an artist I have followed for some time on instagram. I spotted this man on a bench and instantly thought of his work, so I decided to create this using the same technique as Munier. I took progress pictures as well to show how the piece developed.

This week's task was 'wild-life drawing' which involved going out and focusing on people. I found this task really enjoyable - I love people watching! It was quite difficult to get an accurate drawing since people move, but I suppose that's all part of the fun and it adds personality to a drawing. Here are a few from the past week. I used inspiration from Sara Ogilvie for the 3 people on one spread - I found this hard as I was sat in a cafe and I just quickly took a mental picture, those drawings were very quick and rough. I actually found it quite therapeutic to be sat in cafes drawing people, it was pretty relaxing, despite being a challenge.

For part of our drawing module, we were tasked with urban sketching which involved getting out and drawing on location in the city. I did enjoy this, it was a bit different for me but I found it a good challenge. This way of working definitely produces a more spontaneous approach and you aren't limited to media. I think maybe for future urban sketching I need to let loose a little and produce some more quick, experimental responses.

As part of the new brief 'urban sketching', in todays lecture, we all had to go out and draw the outside of our house. We had an hour, and I found it a really useful exercise. I found it quite peaceful actually as we're lucky enough to have a bench and grass area across the road. It did come on raining near the end so I have slight smudges but I suppose that's all part of drawing on location, and I think it adds a bit of depth to the drawing as well.