Visual Communications and Choice Module (Creative Drawing for Production)

As part of the first trimester module we have a module which consists of life drawing, Photoshop, technical drawing and technical sketching which is a series of classes once a week. I also choose Creative Drawing for Production as my choice module which consisted of life drawing, Photoshop and coral painter classes. Looking back on the two of these I probably wouldn’t have picked the choice module that I had chosen and I felt like I was doing nearly the same thing every week. However saying this, my tutor knew that most of us in our visual communications class were taking the same choice module and so gave us other things to learn so we would become more experienced with Photoshop etc. so because these two modules were fairly similar I’m just going to talk about them in the same blog.

Life Drawing was one of the subjects that was in both of the modules and I think this is probably the subject where I needed the most work, and although I still could do with some work on getting the proportions of the body right and other small things I think I have come a long way from where I used to be with my life drawing skills and although they are not perfect drawings I feel really proud with what I managed to achieve. Once all the life drawing classes were over I was designing a costume for a pantomime and I just sat and drew it and was really happy that I had managed to draw a costume on a body without a template which is what I usually do! I do think I need to work on life drawing and from doing so many life drawing classes I have realised that every time you try and draw someone or something you will get that little bit better which is what I want to continue to do, whether it’s be drawing the person down the train from me on the way to Edinburgh or someone in a movie that I’m watching on a lazy Sunday afternoon I want to continue so that I can continue to get better and better which is something I think is a very important factor for a designer to have!

 

 

 

 

The Photoshop classes we had were really good! It reminded me of how much I used to love Photoshop which is something I used a lot during my time at school and I did a lot of photo manipulation throughout my A levels in art. It’s come in handy quite a bit for designing, just seeing what things will look like together changed the shape of doors and also for costumes drawings, giving my costume drawings background that relate to the stage etc. I plan to continue using Photoshop as I think it’s a brilliant design tool for getting your design ideas across to those who are supporting your show and making it a realised production.

 

 

Coral Painter was something that I experienced a little during the summer school design course that I did a few years ago and I really loved doing and thought that it was a really good resource to use for costume drawings because of the different brushes that you can use and textures you can create with it. I have coral painter on my laptop and have a drawing tablet but using the drawing tables from uni showed me that my drawing tablet was a bit aged and I should probably get a new, up to date one so that I can use coral painter quicker!

 

 

Technical Drawing classes were okay I felt like I had learnt a lot about technical drawing when I was at school which put me at a great advantage, I was a bit rusty to begin with but after getting into the swing of it again I remembered really how simple it can be! I also learnt a few tricks about doing close ups in technical drawings and using things to show more detail in drawings. One thing that I am really glad I learned was how to use the big massive drawing boards! I think they are great and I can’t wait for the day when I can use it so quickly that I can pull out a drawing within a few minutes that’s perfect! We got taught about using skins for technical drawings and if I’m honest I don’t really like them, I understand how they can be useful to see how things can come together but I really don’t think I would like to use them! Although when doing a technical drawing for a flooring I understand why that would come in handy and I would definitely use skins for that type of thing!

Our technical sketching class went missing in our timetables so we were given and hour class the week of our hand in and we all just sat drawing and object which would be our hand in. I think technical sketching is a good form of communicating how you want things to look and I think it could really come in handy and I think I would like to learn more about them. I feel having an hour class on technical sketching was definitely not enough and so would like to have more classes on that area!