Emotion

I like my final pieces from this project but I am still having trouble communicating emotion. I spent a long time drawing facial expressions for the Alice character in this project and still feel it could be improved. I am trying to find a balance between a polished finished image and something looser. I need to spend more time researching illustrators that have a style similar to mine but manage to really get into the feel of a situation or story. It is a hard aesthetic to pin down as it is subtle and can be achieved in a huge range of ways, it is not a simple matter of colour, crafting or composition etc.

I like a lot of my quick character sketches but they lose something when I try to transform them to a finished product. I think in my process I tend to make things too uniform and work to a set method that can compromise any feel of movement or emotion. As in previous projects I have come back to struggling with subtlety and simplicity. I start out trying to keep an image as simple as possible to make an idea as effective as possible in its purest form but over time it becomes blurred or lost in my attempts to create an aesthetically pleasing image.

I need to break away from my process and looking at other artists will help me to understand how I can do this. It is easy to feel completely lost when trying to change how you work. At the beginning of this project I had the idea to create a serene garden scene with Alice playing and birds chirping in the trees around her but didn't know how to realise the idea I had in my head. I need to be braver in these situations and not revert back to a creative practice I feel safe with.

I looked at artwork by an illustrator called Nick Hamilton who is also called The Hammo. his work shares some characteristics with mine as it often includes heavily detailed crisp digital work. Looking at his work I realised that the ones I liked best were his more simple pieces that didn't look like impressive technical drawings but were easier to take in and made good use of limited line work and colour. I think in these simpler designs you can see the how the character is made to tell a story from facial expression to posture. With a simple image anything that was not in keeping with the theme would be far more obvious. An overly detailed image can be used to disguise mistakes and this confusion applies to the message your trying to communicate as well. The quality is in the character design and composition not the intricate line work. These images feel softer and more inviting.