Frame: Practical Task

Butterfly, Elephant and I - 1 hour studio task:

Using the frame and cropping concepts touched upon in our visual language studio session, we were asked to create an image in brush and ink, with the 3 compositional elements of a butterfly, an elephant and myself.

I knew from the get go that I wanted to play with dynamic viewpoint/angles and overlapping within the frame, hopefully creating an emphasis on the elephant and me and keeping the scale of the butterfly pretty natural. Elephants suggest scale to me - such a large creature in relation to the butterfly and myself so maybe this element is also something to focus on / exaggerate?

Roughs

Final inked composition

Strengths

I think my overall image is quite successful in conveying an interesting viewpoint and using the frame to crop my image and creating a strong centre of interest for the main elements. I managed to kind of use layering and think I have been successful in conveying my idea of me riding the elephant, which was a little difficult to get my head around.

My elephant looks like a real elephant - which is a huge bonus because I haven't drawn them very often or at this angle.

I really enjoyed working with ink for this quick brief, and the subject matter forced me to look at the reference material closely to get a realistic idea of what elephants and butterflies look like from different angles.

Working to the time constraint of 1 hour was also helpful and forced me to be productive with my time and with my ideas in my roughs. Working loosely with roughs helps get the key information down for your ideas and reference without spending too long on final imagery.


Weaknesses

If I had the chance to do this again, I would play around with the composition of this image further so that there isn't so much blank space in the top right hand corner. I didn't think it would be so prominent with large main figures in the foreground and after adding the ink, but now I have finished the work - I feel the empty space stands out more than I would have liked.

I suck at drawing human people/characters and really really need to become more confident at this. I know it will help my practice in all areas so I NEED to go to life drawing sessions and/or attempt some online tutorials and try drawing from observation. Faces need to be worked on at least!