This week I have something completely new and different to show you guys! A few weeks back I came up with a entirely new idea for a project through a small push from outside influences in the family.
Tomorrow evening I am going to go witness the spectacle of one of my greatest influences Bob Dylan. I have been enormously excited to see him live since I practically live by his words and genius music he has produced in his time and I can only count my lucky stars that I even get to see him live in my lifetime. Anyway, it gets better and this is what really kicked off my inspiration for the project I started working on a few weeks back: the show is located in an old, majestic theater filled with richness of color and atmosphere and MY idol is playing there - the perfect venue for an artist of Dylan's magnitude, I believe. And what really is the cherry on top for me is that I get to go there with the people I love and so I wanted to make something special for the event that would really show how much this meant for me and create something that would capture the moment or the day, if you will.
So, I started brainstorming for a few hours whenever I had the spare moment to work on this since I had initially thought that I would just make this piece and not include it in my portfolio for college. However, I came up with this three-piece idea that I believed would give me a little challenge and at the same time would bring out the best of the event we were about to see. I scribbled ideas for three different works that would tie in together; two small ones (A4s) on the concert itself and one larger (A3) that would be my design for the 'concert poster' for the event which I thought would be extremely handy for my portfolio - showing my ability of illustration since it is what I am planning on studying in the near future.
Above is my scribble for the poster, I picked out the "Academy of Music" logo to fit in with the poster which is essentially trying to portray some of those glow light signs, not looking like it in my sketch but hopefully will in the finished piece. I've made a plan to start working on this one only after finishing the two smaller ones. This piece would be plotted in the middle of the two smaller pieces if you can only see it in your mind's eye.
The first of my two smaller works on A4 sized papers has a few different ideas that I haven't really picked out yet but will have to after I finish writing this blog post since I finished the other smaller work and will get into it very shortly.
The logic behind the three characters is to portray my 'posse' going to the show, because I am dedicating this project to them and am hoping to give a good quality copy of the original to them to show my gratitude of the evening to come. The one above is more of a 'Wizard of Oz' type of idea with surrealism mixed in with the big moon in the background, I sort of just let me mind go on this one, who knows maybe that'll be the winner.
Here's idea number two for one of the smaller works, a more boring option but giving me more liberty to study drawing buildings and symmetric figures which I think I would enjoy quite a lot.
Lastly, my original idea for the first small piece is below, the inadequate representation of the Academy of Music (sketched in about two minutes just to get a general idea) featuring the three characters again finding their way into the building to see the spectacle.
I quite enjoy this one too but I have a fear that it will not work out quite as I wanted proportional-wise. So I might just rule that one out and go ahead with the second sketch I made.
What I did decide on already two weeks ago was my second small work, quickly scribbled below.
It took me awhile to figure out the medium I wanted to be working in, I wanted to have color but still retain a certain darkness that you have during a concert and especially such a majestic one and I was actually between using ink and watercolor or colored pencil and graphite. After a few days on contemplating I decided to go with the colored pencils and took myself to a few art supply stores and bought some high quality VERITHIN Prismacolor hard thin lead pencils and starting working with these - mind you, this was the first time I've used color pencils to produce any kind of serious work other than when I was a child. For that, I was a little skeptical about using colored pencils since it just didn't seem too professional but I got used to it. Well, pretty much. I still prefer charcoal or graphite as a medium.
I started my work from the sides, building up the pillars and the balconies, then working my way through the ground floor and up to the stage and finally got to the curtains. I really wanted a rich color red for my curtains and it really took quite a bit of honing and experimenting to finally get that color, of which you can see more as I go along with the process.
I did quite a bit of research on different types of theaters after doing my preliminary sketch and did a mix on all different types of stages, curtains and balconies to construct my final layout, which I thought was nice because it resembled the Academy of Music but had its own twist to it anyway.
After working on the sides and the stage I began working the rest of the curtains and started filling in the black in the characters.
I left the cone of light as the last part to make sure I get it right, I'm leaving the hardest part for last and doing so it makes it easier for me to blend in the lighter red that the light creates on the curtain and also gives me time to hone in on the last ideas on how I'm going to illustrate Bob under the spotlight.
The next part I wanted to do was a little shadow of light on the characters' faces, only later did I really think that blue may not have been the greatest choice but I thought if I blended it in well enough to just give out a subtle blueness it would all pull in together well.
And la de da! It is finished. The cone of light came out quite well in my opinion, but only below can you really see a correct representation of color in the work - I'm not satisfied with the colors I get from scanning the work.
Just to sort of pull it all together in the end of this work I'd like to note that as for a first work working with color pencils this was quite challenging and exciting for me as for the experimentation - some aspects came out better than others. I especially don't like how the pillars came out I think I could have worked harder on those to get the colors correct but hey, I also had a limited palette to work with so I did best with what I could find.
Above is my from 'plan to work' representation; all in all I am just about satisfied with the outcome and I do honestly believe the next two works will really pull it in together.
As for my next work I will be doing the second smaller work before heading onto the poster work, which will require more thought and planning than these two.
... How do you think it'll come out? I'm hoping for the best...
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