Developing observation drawings on Photoshop

Inspired by how Olivier Kugler draws and then later adds colour digitally I wanted to try adding colour to my drawings on Photoshop. These are just some quick (and not very neat) experiments at doing this.

Morrisons cafe drawings. I think using a few select colours really brings out the atmosphere. But having large areas of strong colour can look a bit oppressive. I've noticed Kugler generally tends to stick to adding colour to smaller details. I should probably look at doing this.

 Vintage London bus. I think leaving the white negative space areas works well as it stops it from looking too much. I like the black accents as well as they seem to add depth.

For this one rather than Kugler I was inspired by Sami Kronk and her drawing in white on a coloured background. I think it looks okay but messing around with the colours has had a negative impact on the line quality.

Drawing Experiments

This week we started our Final Major Project which is super super important and even more super stressful. On Friday we had a drawing lesson to just start us off drawing more experimentally and generating ideas. The theme of my project is 'The Every Day' so I was working with drawing every day food packaging, inspired by John Bratby's Jean and Table Top (1953-4) which I saw in the Grave's art gallery this week and includes branded food items to give a sense of realism and normality.
We had to make drawings and then work back into them, ripping up and reconstituting, and then developing in other ways. It was important to use a lot of different media and we were working to short time limits (like 2 minutes to a drawing).
Anyway forgive the horrible quality iPod photos.

I like the way the black ink looks on the brown paper and also the touches of blue in this one. I don't really like the pale patch though; I think it's too big and distracts from the overall image. I could think about masking some of it in some way. But I think the mix of different textures and materials works well as it adds interest.

This one is made out of lots of different elements of drawings put together. I think it's ended up looking a but too busy and cluttered. In future I could work on leaving more negative space and considering the composition more. The colour scheme I think is interesting though because it's not colours I would normally use. I also used some mathematical tables as background material which I think adds a good texture and unexpected element.

 I did this one on a long thin strip of paper really small, because I usually work pretty big and wanted to add some variation. I really like the colour palette of this because it's very limited but effective and cute. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. I want to try working on a small scale more.

This is a development of the previous image where I've photocopied it repeatedly to make a pattern. I think it works pretty well although it does look quite abstract. Again the colours are pretty good and I like the contrast between the bold stripes and thin lines. I'd like to do some more work with pattern later on.

Drawing with different methods

Today we were looking at using experimental drawing techniques. For example, drawing with boot polish, thread, masking tape and paper etc. I'll probably put some pictures of what I did up soon.

One artist who uses experimental media to draw with is Gavin Turk. Here he has used overlapping tea stains to create cylindrical looking forms. I think that this works well as it is reminiscent of woodcut or potato printing and yet it is subverting the genre of what constitutes art. I also like the varying tones of the tea stains as this gives an interesting effect.