Exploring different artistic techniques and characters

Within my children's book, I will be required to show off a number of different artistic techniques in order to prove my ability and show off what people who publish actual children's books may do. This includes things like having a painted or colouring pencil background whilst the actual image of the character or point being focused on could be digital, photographic or even a piece of fabric/pop out.

This also acts as a means to see what kind of characters I can draw and how well I feel about them. The different kinds of characters drawn feature, super heroes and creating a robot alongside instructions for someone else to recreate it.

Painting via patterns:

In this task we created backgrounds using patterns and rollers for our Children's book. Within that time, I produced this which I actually went on to use in my children's book.

What I have created here is a small background in which features a typical scene complete with grass, sky and a tree. This was all created using a roller and I was happy with the result.

Wax resist background creation:

As part of our artistic techniques workshop, another station allowed used to use wax on a piece of paper and then rush over it using ink to where the wax drawing will stop the ink from going over it. This creates what you can see to the left.

I enjoyed doing this and decided to use what I made in my own book. This is seen on the page to the opposite of painting via patterns page.

Learning to draw superheroes:

As part of a worksheet given, a few pages within it taught how to draw a basic super hero in different positions and poses. I decided to take on some of these drawing exercises and found them pretty easy, this gave a good idea of my drawing capability and how I would handle creating my children's book.

This shows the results of my first exercise where using the instructions on the first half of each sheet. I was pleased with the result of what I have drawn because it resembles and looks alike to what the intended turn out and finished drawing is meant to look like. The only issue I have with my drawings is some of the proportions, some of the proportions seem a little off but more so on the second drawing which wasn't actually completely polished but more of a quick sketch.

Drawing a robot and creating instructions for someone else to draw it:

In our class. we were put against the clock to draw a robot and then create instructions for it that a child would understand. We had 5 minutes to draw the robot and then another 10 minutes to write out the instructions. The purpose of this exercise was to see if we can write in a style of which a child can understand, we also had to create a robot using simple and geometric shapes, like a square or triangle.

Below is the image of the robot i was able to create in 5 minutes:

I am happy with the outcome of my robot but am unsure that it fits entirely to purpose. More than simple shapes are used and this was shown throughout the instructions I wrote. The initial start of the robot started off good as the legs and arms of the robot would be easily explainable. This is because I have used simple shapes like rectangles and circles to create the arms and legs of my robot.

Did I enjoy this exercise? Yes, I think I can draw robots to a good standard but not my favourite. Would I do this as a children's book though, well... No, I don't think my drawing skills are lacking in drawing robots, it's just I don't enjoy it that much and I feel as if children would much prefer something more friendly. I will have to wait and see till i carry out my questionnaire to children.

Because of the complex and irregular shapes used, I had trouble explaining myself and trying to bring sense into what I wanted the person reading my instructions to create.

Another problem I faced was my handwriting and language used in general. I found it hard to write in a straight line, especially against the clock without lines. When I write, I also try and naturally write as descriptive and well as I can. It was hard to write in a much simpler fashion and because of this, my instructions were left unclear and too descriptive for what a child would understand.

We then passed on the instructions to a random person in the class of which they then attempted to recreate the robot using the Instructions. The results were a little lacklustre.

This is the result of my what was drawn from my instructions given out. Some resemblance can be made but not so much that it actually looks like the original. I think more of what stands out here is that there two completely different drawings done by people at a different artistic level. Personally, I draw a lot in my free time and have always created illustrations and images of things I love.

But what is to fault for the drawing not looking like the original? Well, it's a combination of both my terrible writing and inability to write in a simple way when trying to explain and get something across but also the drawers ability to draw to perspective and follow instructions clearly. For the better lack of words, you can see that not the most effort was put into the drawing as when I said draw a straight line or a rectangle, the lines aren't straight at all. A ruler could of been used, for example.