Friday 31 October 2014

Typography

The second half of the week was spent focusing on typography, which again was a totally new area for me. Drawing hand rendered type is something that I would previously have thought would be quite difficult but I have since found out that it is just the same as any other kind of observational drawing. Initially I didn't particularly like the ground as I felt it looked too bland and I would have preferred it with a colour. However after doing the type over the top I have changed my mind as I think that coloured papers on the ground would have clashed with the coloured pen and the oil pastel too much. I think the two top pieces are the two best ones as I really like the section of the Guinness bottle that I drew as the sizing of it fills the space and it isn't totally straight like the bottom two seem to be. Even though the type on the right hand side isn't straight, I feel as though it was quite well controlled to say it had been done using a stick and ink.

Top Left and Bottom Right: Guinness Bottle in Felt Tip and Oil Pastel
Top Right and Bottom Left: Paprika Tin in ink with willow stick and graphite crayon
The next piece of work we did was a linear drawing of the inside of a kitchen cupboard to try and capture type on familiar household products. This was a lengthy process as each item in the cupboard had a lot of information to record on it and required a high attention to detail. One thing that I have learnt from doing this drawing is the importance of scale when drawing something like type as some of the products I drew ended up being too big for the drawing so I could only fit half of the lettering on without distorting it. By doing the drawing in fine liner pen I have become more accurate as I did not have the chance to rub out any mistakes. I would never have thought of doing a drawing of a cupboard before but it is definitely something that I will try again, possibly on a messier cupboards the one I drew here was very neat and structured so to get a more interesting drawing I will try something more chaotic.

Linear study of products and typefaces found in a kitchen cupboard
 
The final task of the typography project was to find two quotes that related to the senses and make a piece based on them. I used two song quotes that I liked and that I felt had quite strong visuals attached to them that I could translate into a typeface. The first of these quotes was from a Kodaline song called 'All I Want' and I chose the words "If I could see your face once more I'd die a happy man I'm sure". From this I decided to use the words 'I'm Sure' as I felt that I could represent them well in certain fonts. The second quote came from the Jake Bugg song 'Taste It' and the words "I can taste it in my mouth, it tastes so bittersweet" and I decided to use the word 'bittersweet'.
 
I used monochrome pens to create a chaotic ground that contrasted with the words 'I'm Sure' but after developing the idea in my sketchbook the colours looked too bland so I added in one dark blue accent colour to bring out the lines and I think this works well with the overall look of the piece. I am also happy with the use of fonts as I think that the first word has the look of something handwritten and personal which links in with the word. The typeface that I drew for the second word looks bold and has a confident look to it which fits in with the word sure. The type for 'sure' was much more difficult to draw as it required some very precise measurements to make sure each letter was spaced properly and that the thickness of each line matched up. I really like this piece as a whole as I think the words used work well with the ground and the typeface that I drew as I have created a strong visual for the words.

 
 
I am not as happy with this piece as I was the last as I think it looks quite empty due to the amount of negative space. The colours that I used to relate to the words were strong enough in their own right so I felt a ground would be too much. If I were to redo the piece I would probably try to use a ground to take up some of the piece or change the layout of the type so that both words weren't directly on top of the other and the same size. I wanted this piece to reflect the literal meanings of the words so for the word bitter I used a white wax crayon to draw the inside of a lemon out and did a yellow wash of ink over it. The wax crayon didn't resist the ink as much as I wanted it to so if I were to redo it I would use a stronger resist method so that the lemon drawing was more obvious. I think that the contrast between the fonts on the two words suits them both well and they have a good visual link to the meanings of them which is what I hoped to achieve on the piece.

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