My London Illustrations
Since I’m a London boy, I travelled around the city taking photographs and doing sketches, using a pencil and a fine liner pen, to objects and buildings I found fascinating. With some of the photographs I took, I did more further drawings and abstract illustrations using different techniques and materials for this project.
I will be starting off with my favourite piece I produced, which is the Telephone Box illustration. Every time I look at this work, I feel so proud that I produced this illustration. Nevertheless, I was inspired by Stephen Wiltshire’s ‘Telephone Box near the Royal Opera Arcade’ illustration, where he uses different hatching techniques for his shading and toning using, what looks like to me a black ball pen. I also like the way he uses one colour only for the telephone box, which stands out well and makes his design more abstract. I wanted to do something similar with the hatching technique and only using one colour for my illustration so when I was exploring London, I took a photograph of an area near Convert garden where there was a telephone box, which reminded me of the Stephen Wiltshire’s work. During the process of this piece, it took me a while to get the shape right for the telephone box but once I got that perfect, it was quite easy for me to do the background features, using the photograph I took to help me with my illustration design.
Here we have two different mono-prints of The National Gallery building. I’ve experimented and made a range of different mono-prints but these two were my favourites. For these designs, I used one of my photographs of the building and used it to help me draw a simple outline of the building, which would be easy to cut out for my monoprint on an A3 paper.I experimented with different colours, such as red, orange and yellow, as well as mixing them to get an abstract, vibrant and fiery look, using a sponge and acrylic paint to dab around the cutout.
After finishing the monoprints, I wanted to try something different with it so I had an idea of drawing key features from the building, on the print using a fine liner pen, which worked out well in the end. It made the design look simple but detailed at the same time due to the plain yellow background and the line drawings.
Furthermore, I used one of my monoprints (without the line drawings) and used a scanner to experiment with different outcomes. I printed out in black & white and inverted the original work. I preferred and loved the inverted image because of the light blue colour it produced, with the unique texture from my use of the sponge, standing out more clearly than the original.
For this illustration, I was inspired by Elena Romanova’s ‘Watercolour Cityscape’ pieces. I admired how she uses vibrant colours and blending them together to get that distinctive look, as well as the way she uses the dripping effect with the watercolours which made it more diverse. In my work, I didn’t want to use the London skyline as I wanted to use the photographs of the London bus and taxi instead and to see the different outcome of not using the skyline. I used the image to help me draw out the outline of the vehicles, which made it easier for me to use the watercolours and get the details. After that, I wanted to use Romanova’s dripping effect for my illustration so I started diluting the watercolours together, for the bottom of each vehicle and placed the paper upwards. I lost patients using this method because it was taking long to drip down the page, so I diluted the watercolours again but instead of placing the paper upwards, I used a straw and started blowing through it to get the dripping effect, which worked better in the end.
This piece was difficult for me to do. I was inspired by Emanuel M.Ologeanu’s ‘Old Street’ ink illustration. I like the way he uses the ink or watercolour for toning and shading to make the illustration more realistic, which is cleverly done and produced on a book page. Doing his illustration on a book page made it very diverse because it’s not common but I think the artist used it well. I used one of my sketches I did on an area near Trafalgar Square, to draw it again on a black and white newspaper. The reason why it was difficult to do this illustration was because I struggled to use ink for toning and shading. The best way for me to do this was diluting the ink and using the brush and spreading it to get the tone and shading. I tried different techniques but this was the outcome which I’m happy about even though it still can be much improved.
I was inspired by Yoni Alter’s different colourful city silhouette prints to produce this illustration. I liked the idea of mixing and blending different vibrant colours together for his illustration and the use of his colours looks well organised and structured. You can tell this was produced digitally but I wanted to do something similar with the blending of the colours and someone gave me an idea to use coloured transparent paper to do this. I decided to use the Nelson’s Column statue in Trafalgar Square do to my illustration on newspaper. I had to draw a simple outline of the statue so I know what shape to cut out from the transparent paper but after cutting them up, it was quite hard to stick them down using glue because they were very fragile and easy to rip or easily stretched out. After I figured out a way to lay them put neatly, I placed the different shapes and overlapped them together to make mew colours and to have a similar effect like in Alter’s prints.
In this final piece, I used just pencil and acrylic paint to produce an illustration of Piccadilly Circus, where I was inspired by John Haskin style of work. I like how very realistic and detailed his work are by only using paint, which makes you think it could be a photograph. Although I’m not the best at drawing things very realistic, I tried my best to do something similar to John Haskin’s artwork for my illustration. Again, I used an image I took of Piccadilly Circus, which helped me draw out the outline using a pencil. I found it difficult to get the perfect shape of the curved billboard but the outcome made it more abstract when I finished it off using acrylic paint. It took me a while to finish this but I’m proud of the outcome.
Hope you enjoyed reading this but if you enjoyed my artwork, there is plenty more on my Bechance page, with the link shown below. I would also appreciate if you talk to me about your views and opinions for my work.
Follow me on twitter: @Jibbz97!
Thank You,
Girbaut Bawangudi
