Exercise 2.3

Words to pictures

Choose one of the words below to make a written list of the different manifestations that word can take:-

Painting

Writing

Sound

Designing

Making

These could be sayings, expressions, slang terms, or colloquialisms.

Now visualise the list in two ways, for Illustrators and graphic designer’s use thumbnails sketches for each of the words and phrases of your list. The sketches could be illustrative or iconic.

For photographers you can take a photo of each of your list phrases or words.

Once you have completed this part incorporate all of them into one A2 sized image, you can re-draw or collage copies to organise your icons into a design.

Reflect in your log.

So I started this exercise with thinking about which word to choose, as I am a illustrator and love painting it had to be painting for me.

So I started to think about sayings and expressions that would fit ‘Painting’ as a word.

Exciting as watching paint dry

A fresh lick of paint

Another coat of paint

A new lick of paint

A picture paints a thousand words

Do I need to paint a picture

Paint the town

Paint yourself into a corner

War paint

Paint yourself with the same brush

So I feel I have enough here to start the thumbnail sketches.

I decided to use my iPad for this exercise as we have to make a picture at the end, I find it easier to draw on a iPad so you can move the illustrations around and into position at the end.

I started with the first saying ‘Exciting as watching paint dry’ I sketched out a person that was looking board waiting for paint to dry, then added in a wall so he had somewhere to look at.

I then added in more detail and tidied it up a bit.

I then started on the next saying ‘A fresh lick of paint’ I decided to go iconic for this one and literal, so I chose to draw some one licking paint.

Again I started with rough sketches, then added some detail and cleaned them up a bit.

The next saying was ‘Another coat of paint’ again I decided to go literal and drew a coat being painted.

I then chose to draw a painting on an easel being painted for the ‘A picture paints a thousand words’ for the saying.

I thought I would use typography for the 1000 words so it was again literal.

I left out the saying ‘A new lick of paint’ as it was so similar to ‘A fresh lick of paint’.

I went on to draw the saying ‘Paint the town red’, this one I did as literal as well.

I started with the rough sketches as before, and then added the detail and cleaned them up.

It’s a bit difficult to see the town here but I think you can see the shape and outline, I didn’t want to add too much detail as this was just an exercise.

After drawing those 5 sayings I then moved onto the final part of the exercise and re-arranged the illustrations into a scene in itself.

I must admit I did find it hard to create a scene with the separate illustrations, as they were hard to pull together to make something coherent.

So I decided to add the ‘paint the town red’ on top of the easel to incorporate these two sayings, the I moved the ‘another coat of paint’ as though the boy was holding the brush. Then I put the ‘A new lick of paint’ on the floor, to look as though they where the boys tools.

I think it creates a scene, but maybe like a dream scene, something unusual and fantastical. To finish off I would erase the lines that overlap, and pull the 1000 words on top of the red town, so you could see that a bit more too.

Reflection

I was not sure about this exercise at first, I thought it would help with drawing skills and illustration and make you think about words and drawing them, but actually I liked the story telling outcome from the exercise the most. I think you could think up a lot of stories for this illustration and use your imagination to come up with exciting and different outcomes. It could be a dream the boy is having, or a set of things that happened to him, drawn in a sequence style illustration. It could be a fantasy style story, where things like this can happen!

Working on my iPad helped this exercise to move quicker, and made it easier to re-arrange the illustrations, I have developed my digital skills over the last year, and have enjoyed sketching on it for a while now, I use it as another sketchbook.

I could have also cut out pieces from a magazine for this exercise and collaged the coat, a person and the paint onto paper, there are many options you could have chose to experiment with.