Welcome to COMD 3313 Introduction to Illustration!
On this site you will have access to all materials presented in the online class, your weekly assignment pages, and additional helpful resources. Here you will also participate in class discussions, and post images of work in progress to share with your classmates.
Carefully read the directions below to get started. Also please check out the UPLOADING INSTRUCTIONS POST on how to post to this site and to your ePortfolio.
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Questions
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Faculty: This example post demonstrates how you can provide information about each class for your students. It uses the category “Classes” and can be found under Activities > Classes in the site menu. Use the suggested outline below to structure your class posts.
This Week's has been outlined in detail to give a clear vision of the overall course. Please feel free to use your own materials.
Date: Tuesday, September 1st
Meeting Info: Add online details or in-person location
Course Goals: To familiarize students with the field of illustration including its basic working methods, industry practices, basic history and philosophies. Artistic techniques will be taught as well, however this is a class focused on concept generation, and the creation of thoughtful illustrations, as opposed to a drawing or painting technical course.
To-Do Before Class
Join this Openlab Site
Print and Review the Syllabus
Personalize your ZOOM background! 🙂
Topic
WELCOME TO INTRO TO ILLUSTRATION
Objectives
To familiarize students with the objectives of the course.
To establish working practices and clarify expected outcomes.
To introduce the basics of illustration working practices.
Color is one of the most powerful aspects of making art. Almost everyone who loves to create can remember the childhood excitement generated by a brand new box of crayons!
Everyone has a favorite color, artists and non-artists alike. Our relationship to color is one of the most powerful relationships we have as a species. It is intrinsically connected to how we relate to our world. And so of course it is one of the most powerful aspects to consider when making art.
Color Temperature
Much of our relationship to color is based on instinct. For example, we see colors as warm or cool based on our physical response to them.
Warm things are warm colors (such as fire, the sun, hot coals, and in this case hot food.)
and cool things are cool colors (such as water and ice, which as blue or bluish).
Interestingly warm and cool colors also create a sense of perspective and depth when we look at an image. Warm colors tend to advance towards us, whereas cool colors tend to recede away from us.
In these two images note how early 20th-century illustrator Edmund DuLac uses this trick. In the first image of The Princess and the Pea he creates a sense of incredible height, as the cold blue-purple recedes from the viewer, effectively raising the height of the bed canopy. And in the second one, A Palace of Wonder, a sense of depth is created between the warmth of the interior space and the cold dark outside.
COLOR AND CULTURE
However, a great deal of our reactions to color are not innate, they are in fact cultural. For example Black and Death are associated in many Western cultures, in many Eastern cultures it is associated with white—its direct opposite.
Take a look at this info-graphic. Note how many color associations change, depending on where you are in the world. However also note how HOT and COLD or Color’s Relationship to Temperature do not.
It is however important to understand your target market and the culture that they come from, because culture has a strong influence on the development of cultural-color associations in childhood building the adults eventual perceptions of color.
Throughout this module and the next we will look at these basic reactions we all have to color and learn to compose in color effectively. We will build on what we have learned regarding composition, concept, point of view, and value and we will see how we can use these reactions to color to aid us in our ultimate goal, telling a great story through narrative illustration.
However, before we can do that lets be sure we have down the basics.
THE COLORWHEEL
The color wheel is one of the most powerful tools artists and designers have to help us understand and use color effectively. Â It is strongly recommended that as you examine the different color schemes throughout this post, you look at a color wheel and plot them out.
FUN FACT! The first circular color wheel was created by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666. As if the laws of planetary motion and gravity weren’t enough!
Foto: picture-alliance
We begin with a three-part color wheel that shows only pure colors, meaning colors which no amount of mixing will result in. These three colors are of course our primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. All other colors are derived from these three hues.
Next we move on to our secondary colors.These are the colors formed by mixing the primary colors with each other: green, orange, and purple.
You can further break down the color wheel into tertiary colors.These are the colors formed by mixing a primary and secondary color: yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green, and yellow-green.
And of course, we divide that wheel based on Color Temperature, with warm color opposite cold.
To create a successful illustration, your color palette or scheme needs to support your main idea. It must work to further your narrative and or concept. Â
Drawing by Philippe Buchet, Color by Matt Hollingsworth
Create an interior illustration or a book cover for your story reboot. Choose a dramatic moment in time that captures the mood, genre and character of your story.
Final Art can be made using any combination of traditional drawing / inking skills and digital coloring.
Final art must make full use of value and read as a finalized piece of art work.
Final art may be in Color or in Black and white. If in color a limited palate is highly recommended.
Create 2-3 concept sketches for narrative illustrations featuring the same character(s) in different moments in time from your story. Be sure the settings and situations are different. Use the characters you created for Part 1.
These illustrations by “golden age” illustrator Arthur Rackham are a great example of this. Here his version of Alice is depicted at various moments in the story and from different points of view.
NEXT: Incorporating feedback from your instructor and peers, finalize one of the sketches into a final illustration. This can be an interior illustration or a book cover.
CREATE values studies and color studies as part of process work.
Final Art can be made using any combination of traditional drawing / inking skills and digital coloring.
Final art must make full use of value and read as a finalized piece of art work.
Final art may be in Color or in Black and white. If in color a limited palate is highly recommended.
Prepare a 3 minute Presentation (5 minutes total with Q&A) on your story and your working process, guiding us through the project from inception to conclusion.
You will Present your work on the last day of class.
Submit your Presentation as PDF PROCESS BOOK .
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Here are some successful examples of Final Illustrations and their Accompanying Process Books.
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