It’s been a busy week indeed!
In between running around like a headless chicken and trying to maintain a ‘healthy’ work/job/life balance, I’ve finally finished up my final project of the year ♥
It was quite an arduous process, but I think I actually really benefited from the super short time frame I’d been left with- not only was I working towards my deadline, I was also racing to get my art book submitted for publishing in time! I wanted this piece to be included, so that was another self imposed time limitation.
I created the piece on Procreate, using a variety of my own photos from my 2018 China trip to inform the architecture and layout. I clocked in just over 30 hours across 4 days according to the app, so here’s a wee time lapse video of my process to make a very long story short! (This is the 30 second quick cut- the longer time lapse video is about 12 mins long, and unfortunately I couldn’t quite get it to load up on Vimeo!)
So it was quite a linear, reassured workflow, but also had some new techniques being used since Procreate is a completely new tool to me since my last Cheltenham project in 2017. I’m really pleased with how far I’ve come, as my line art, layers and detailing/texture management has come leaps and bounds. While I still appreciate the flat, pastel-y appeal of my old Cheltenham piece, this newer one boasts a lot more depth, as well as a more experimental colour palette that really is quite ‘far out’ for me as an artist- up until now I really have been stuck in my ways with pastels and monotone, but the subject matter fully supported a warm, deep toned palette and I think it ties in quite well.
Here’s the finished piece- there’s loads wrong with it of course, but I’m content for now ♥
Although I feel I’ve had a lot of success with this project, there were still some weak areas here and there- artwork wise, I think there’s still something amiss with the anatomy… but I have the time to fix this before final show, where I’ll hopefully be exhibiting this art as a centrepiece. If I’d have an ample amount of time prior to hand in this could have been fixed, but my workflow left me with a bit of a difficult situation- the way in which I’d blended the layers and applied tone and shading meant the line art and skin tones were across multiple layers, so it won’t be an easy task to correct this.
Working on this Cheltenham project has opened up lots more opportunities for me- I’m considering making a series of similar pieces based on my travels around the world. Also, when I submit this piece to the Awards I could potentially be featured in a catalogue showcasing selected entries from the year. Very exciting~
And with that, this wraps up my project work for Semester 2! Left to do is to finish off this blog, as well as some promo type stuff, like business cards, a creative CV and other artist-specific things like potential merchandise for final show. So, targets for the following week include tying up all the loose ends and making sure everything is ready and prepped for hand in, and also starting to think about final show- what I want to exhibit, sources for merchandise, and technicalities like layouts, exhibit space organisation, and marketing.
References
Collingwood, C. (2019). Modernisation [digital].
Collingwood, C. (2019). Modernisation Time Lapse .
chalon joy collingwood 