Exercise 3: Words to pictures

For this exercise, I chose the word Painting:

I then looked for expressions and phrases containing this word. I did some research online (https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/painting and https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/paints) and asked a friend to try to gather as many examples as I could.

Here is the list I created. I divided the list into two categories:

Metaphorical meaning:

Painting the town red, Word painting (tone painting or text painting), painting a [bad/dark] picture, be no oil painting, painting oneself into a corner, painting the devil on the wall, Painting (someone) with the same brush.

Literal meaning:

Painting by numbers, hanging a painting, painting a wall, face painting, landscape/portrait painting, oil/watercolour painting, rock/glass painting.

I then started to sketch scenes to illustrate these phrases. At first, I was concentrating too much on the accuracy of poses, proportions,.. so I decided to start afresh and sketch faster to create more dynamic sketches:

I sketched mainly from imagination but also used Google images to check various poses. I also googled representations of the devil and looked at elements commonly used such as a tail, horns, a fork. I then created a cartoony character that would contain these elements.

I sometimes played with the metaphors and used literal meanings instead for comic effect.

Once I had created rough sketches in my sketchbook, I rearranged the drawings in Illustrator to see how I could use some of the sketches to create a single illustration:

I decided to develop the idea based on Artboard #2 and created the illustration in Procreate on the iPad. This is the work in progress:

Once I was mostly happy with the illustration, I added a few final touches in Photoshop.

This is the final illustration:

When I created the initial sketches, some stories started to emerge and I began to link the different scenes in my head. The man on the left is painting the landscape, while the little girl next to him is painting the same landscape by numbers. We could imagine that the man with the skateboard had just finished painting the devil on the wall when the lady, after a few glasses of champagne, decided to take his red paint and play with it (painting the town red). Meanwhile the devil is trying to fight the man who is painting the wall with his fork, while the man is ignoring his threatening behaviour since the devil is only a painting on the wall. Finally the cat is looking at the little girl with curiosity as face painting often involves painting wild cat faces.

Once I had sketched the scene, I used the opportunity of this exercise to practice adding contrast and colours. I enjoyed working with brushes in Procreate and tried to add texture with brush strokes. I still struggle with darker colours and need to improve my technique in that respect. When I add very dark shadows, it lacks subtlety and I undid some of it as it did not really work.

I struggled a bit with the composition and I am aware that this is something I need to work on. I find challenging to create a scene that has depth. Maybe I could take photos of different places and analyse the perspective, angles,…. This is something I could also do with other artists’ artwork to see how they introduce elements such as buildings, roads, cars or anything else.

I was surprised to see how stories came to life as soon as I started creating quick sketches. This is a very good exercise that has helped me to realise how starting without a particular idea about the outcome can bring unexpected and interesting results.