The Book of Drawings: Final Outcome

This is my final and finished book and the process I carried out to make it.

The pages were the most simple part of the book to make. I used plain cartridge paper to print my images onto because I think it was suitable and durable. I printed my images off back to back so that they fit in the right order and I had the minimum amount of pages possible. To bind the pages together I used a technique called Saddle stitch which I used white cotton for (so it didn't show) and I think it worked really well. The pages were sewn together tightly therefore making it hard to come apart. The images inside where highly inspired by artists that I looked at such as Shaun Tan and Rodrigo Araya. I went for the black and white style with animals inserted into every day situations.

To make the cover of my book I took two pieces of A5 mount board and stuck it to a sheet of black card that was just a little bigger than A4, with a few millimeter gap between them. I used strong glue to board to the card and folded over the edges to create a neat cover. Once that had dried I got another piece of A4 black card and stuck that on top of the folded edges just so that the inside of the book was neat and clean. Once that was dry I got my bound pages and glued them into the gap which I left earlier. When the whole thing was dry I noticed that the book didn't close with ease and realised the problem was that I didn't leave a big enough gap between the two pieces of mount board which created the spine. I left it under weights for a few days and it seems okay now. I was going to make a fabric cover for my book of drawings but I realised that I liked the paper style much better. I researched Sarah McNeil and she makes sewn bound sketchbooks with paper covers and I really liked the look of it. I decided just to keep my cover plain black because I didn't want to put a title on there and I wanted the cover to flow well with the style of the drawings (black and white).

The Book of Drawings: Binding

For my final book I decided I would print my images onto cartridge paper because it is good quality therefore making a book with it will make it very durable. I had a few problems printing at first but after a few practice tries I got there in the end. I printed my images off back to back so that they folded nicely in order and so I was only using a limited amount of pages. I put the 3 sheets together and held them in place with some bulldog clips so they didn't move and used a needle to pierce five holes into the crease of the pages. I got some white cotton and used a saddle stitch to stitch the pages together. I really like the outcome of this binding and I think it will look really good when the cover is added.
Here are some images of how the binding turned out. I also converted the images in photoshop to greyscale because some of the grey tones I used in my drawings had a purple/blue tinge to them and I didn't like how it looked.

The Book of Drawings: Binding Test

I found a video on youtube on how you bind a book using something called a saddle stitch and I really wanted to try this because it looked like a really simple and neat way of binding with a professional looking finish. 

When I tried printing my final images to make my book I had a few printing problems so I used the images that weren't successful to trial this technique. These images show my results.

This is the spine of the test book and I think that the thread looks very neat and the excess can be hidden when the cover is added.

This is the inside the first page of the book. I really like how this looks because you can barely see the stitching and I think it looks really professional.

This is the centre of the book which was my main concern in case the thread looked messy but I was surprised when it looked very tidy. I also think that using white thread was a good choice because you can barely see it against the paper. I definitely think I am going to use this binding technique as I think it is very effective.

The Book of Drawings Image Six

For my last image I decided to draw the street I walk along at the end of the day. I used the round brush tool and the mixer tool to create this and I even used the shape tools to create the traffic lights. I tried to capture the weather but changing the opacity of the layers to make them look hazy. I think it worked quite well. 

I created the sky the same as I did this others using the cloud looking tool. I tried making the sky look darker to show a later time of the day.

Like in my third image I thought that something coming out of the ground would look good so I drew an oversized mole emerging from the road. I used the grass tool for the fur and just the round tool for the feet. I think this looks quite weird but I like it.

I wanted to add some trees into the image but when I was trying to create it using the normal pen tools I could not seem to get them to look right so I downloaded tree brushes and I think they look much better.

After looking through my animal sketchbooks I decided I wanted to add a giraffe peeking around the corner. I used the fur tool and the rounded tool to create texture and tone and I think it looks rather good in my own opinion. I don't think this is one of my strongest images but I think it still fits in well with the flow of the series.

The Book of Drawings Image Five

When doing reportage I sketched some drawings of the studio I work in and decided to draw a small section of it for my fifth image. I used the round brush tool like in the previous images to draw and colour the room, adding shadow and tone along the way. For the floor I used a textured brush to try and create a floor that wasn't plain and boring.

My idea for this one was just to have my tutors in the room but in animal form. For my tutor Amy I chose to draw a flamingo because she is tall and slim therefore I thought it fitted quite well. I used inspiration from my initial sketches from Flamingo Land and used the round brush and the mixer tool to create texture and tone.

I drew my other tutor Ben as a bear because that's what he reminds me of (no offence Ben). I used inspiration from found images and books. I used a fur brush tool to create the fur of the bear and I think it looks unfinished but I kind of like it that way.

I placed the animals in the room and I realise that The bear is smaller than the flamingo but that is simply because Ben is smaller than Amy! To add more realism I copied the bear image and changed the opacity to create a reflection in the window.

I then also created a reflection in the same way for the flamingo. This is not my favourite image but I still think it is quite effective.

The Book of Drawings Image Four

This is the fourth image and it s going to be of me working at college. I started of by using two shades of grey and a round brush to create a wall and I left a blank space in the middle for where I am going to draw a tablet.

Using lines and rectangles I created a basic shape of a Wacom Cintiq that I use at college and I even took a screenshot of the process and made it look like the Cintiq is switched on and I'm drawing the image on there too. This was just to make my drawings seem trippy and weird and I think it works.

Next I used the round tool again to create a table and an electric cable. I used different shades of grey to create shadows. 

Next I used a square tool to create a plug socket on the side just so the image a little bit of realism.

Next I drew an arm/hand making it look like I'm drawing onto the cintiq. I used the round brush tool and the mixer brush tool to create shadow and tone. I also found that I really liked the drawings I did of the taxidermy hedgehog s I decided to draw one just on the corner of that table as just a little cute creature.  

I also found that Lemurs are really awesome animals to draw and I really liked some of the drawings I did of them in my animals sketchbook so I decided to draw on peeping out from behind the cintiq.I used the round brush tool in black, which and grey to create texture and ton. I am really pleased with how this has turned out, I really like it and I think it is very effective.

The Book of Drawings Image Three

This is the third image in the series and it is of the street leading up to college. I sketched a few drawings from this area before hand and I drew this out using a round brush with blacks and greys. I used the fill tool to colour most of the buildings and also used light and dark greys shadows.

Next I used a spatter brush to create the trees in the background which I think look really effective.

For the sky I did the same as the first image and used the tool that resembles a cloud and created a very realistic looking sky.

With influence from Rodrigo Araya I added an octopus tentacle going around the side of the building and even used drop shadow to make it look more realistic. I really like how this looks. 

I thought that the empty road could be used like the sea so I looked back at my reference drawings of Orcas and drew one coming out of the road just like it would come out of the sea. I am really proud of the drawing and it is my favourite so far because it is very random and unusual.

The Book of Drawings Image Two

This is the second image in the series and it is a drawing from the inside of a bus. I sketched out a few simple drawings of the insides of buses and picked the angle I like best. I again used a round brush in black to draw the outline and I wanted to make the poles into octopus tentacles because I think that it would be unusual and I tried some different techniques of doing this and I found that using a pressure sensitive brush in black worked best because it added tone. I also drew the face of a lion in the bus driver window because most bus drivers are portrayed as quite angry people. I also thought it would look pretty good if I left a plain white space where a person would be sitting and I think it looks interesting and even a little bit creepy.

Next I decided to colour the under layers of the image including the floor, the roof and the windows. I used different shades of grey and added shading to eh windows and roof. For the floor I firstly used a dark grey and then a spatter brush to create a texture.

Next I finished the rest of the poles by drawing on the tentacles and using dark and light grey to create tone and shadows.

Next I coloured the chairs and used a textured brush to create the texture on the chair handles and the fabric on the seats. The chairs turned out to be a blue/grey but I like the way it looks. Also, I really like how the white silhouette is looking.

After looking through my animals sketchbooks I though that this image would look good with some kind of tall animal standing up and I think a meekat worked really well. To create the meerkat I used a round brush and a grass brush that I think looked like fur. I duplicated the meerkat layer a few times so that the fur became darker and the light areas became more defined.

When I finished the meerkat I copied the image of it, flipped it and changed the opacity to create a reflection in the bus window that I think looks quite good.

The Book of Drawings Image One

This is the first image of my journey which takes place at my home. To create this I used the brush tool and drew the outline of the street first in black. I then used different shades of grey to colour the scene. I created shadows by using the soft round brush and blending with the mixer brush tool. For the trees and bushes I used the spatter brushed because they have a bush/leaf effect and I think it works quite well. For the sky I used a brush that resembled a cloud and the good thing about this brush is that it changes shade after every click of the mouse so it created a very nice textures sky and makes it look like clouds which I am really happy with.

Once I had created the street and has coloured it all and shaded everything I started thinking about which animals I would like to incorporate into the image. I really like one of the drawings of an octopus from my animals and creatures sketchbook so I took inspiration from that and used a pressure sensitive brush to create a tonal drawing of an octopus. After I had drawn the octopus I realised that it looks a bit out of place but I think it adds to the random look of the image. I also tried adding a shadow to the bottom of the octopus but it made it look like it was floating in mid air more than it does already so I decided to leave it.

I also added an oversized bird to the sky with inspiration from my animals and creatures drawings. I used a small pressure sensitive brush to draw the whole of the bird and I think the texture of the wings works quite well.

After looking at the image I thought it looked a bit static so I added a shadow of the bird which I did by copying the bird image, flipping it upside down and changing the opacity of it too make it look more shadow like.

Overall I am quite pleased with how my first image turned out.

The Book of Drawings Ideas and Inspiration

The first initial idea I had for my book of drawings was to create a series of 6 digital drawings that document a journey that I take. But after a lot of researching and thinking about my idea I thought that it wasn't very exciting and that's when I came across Shaun Tan who draws every day scenes but adds animals and weird creatures to them to make them a bit more exciting and I really liked this idea.

I started to research a lot of artists that draw characters and animals and even looked at films such as My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke and they all had some really interesting characters in them which I was inspired by.

Because I had previously completed projects based around reportage, animals and creatures and people I thought that I could definitely use some inspiration from drawings I had already done. I looked through my sketchbooks and found images I liked and animals which I thought would work well in my drawings.

I was really inspired by the drawing and colouring style of Rodrigo Araya because I like how simple yet quite effective it is and I took a lot of inspiration from style.

I thought about how I would assemble the book once I had completed my drawings. I looked at a variety of binding methods and found a YouTube video which was very helpful.

Bobby Chiu

http://www.imaginismstudios.com/artists/Bobby%20Chiu

Bobby Chiu is an artist from Canada and I researched him because he draws really crazy characters and they look they like are inspired by Tim Burton/Alice in Wonderland and I really like his style.  The colours he uses and his colouring technique play a part in how effective the image as whole is and i think every aspect of the sketches work really well together. 

Here are some of his images that I am really inspired by: