Human Imprint Initial Ideas

When I was initially given the brief of ‘Human Imprint’, I began mind-mapping different ideas and thoughts that came into my head first to create a more genuine response. Human imprint can be interpreted in so many different ways from the physical imprints we make (such as footsteps) to the imprints we make on others and ourselves. The first idea that came to me was the way we have imprinted the earth to make it our own through building houses and public architecture. Buildings are all around us and impact our everyday lives, we have evolved to create more and more elaborate structures to contain ourselves within.

 

Artist Inspiration

Whilst browsing Pinterest to gain inspiration, I came across a Paris based artist under the name of ‘Daily Minimal’. His work initially caught my eye as it was beautifully clean and minimal which satisfies my perfectionist personality greatly as well as my interest in geometric perfection. After doing more research into his work, I found that his name is ‘Pierre Voisin’ and that he is a free-lance graphic designer who specialises in creative minimalism.

I love the way the Voisin uses such a limited colour palette of black and white as it compliments the minimalistic tone of the shapes and lines and does not create a distraction from them. In my own work, I use a lot of black and white as they are such beautifully minimal colours when paired together.

I am also truly inspired by the way he uses white lines to split up large blocks of black to give depth and dimension to the designs. I would love to use this technique in my own work to see what effect it would have on my shapes and if it would give them the same depth Voisin creates in his artwork.

 

Miniature​ Architectural Drawings

In response to my initial ideas, I decided to play with scale and create miniature drawings of buildings in various places all over the UK. I wanted to capture the different characters these buildings have and show the small details that make the structures unique. As I was working on a smaller scale, I was worried about not being able to replicate the beautiful little details these structures have, so I decided to first draw out less detailed versions and then add detail using acetate. This made sure that I did not ruin my original drawings if the detail was too overwhelming.

As I was working on a smaller scale, I was worried about not being able to replicate the beautiful little details these structures have, so I decided to first draw out less detailed versions and then add detail using acetate. This made sure that I did not ruin my original drawings if the detail was too overwhelming. Thankfully, adding the detail that I did really accentuated the character these buildings have without it making the drawings look too busy.  I experimented with using colour to attempt to add more dimensions to my drawings but I feel that with all the detail in the miniatures, adding colour distracted my eyes from the little characteristic details I had added.

I believe that my drawings were successful in that I was able to show the different types of housing and structures in the UK as they have never been seen before on such a small scale. Yet I felt that this initial idea did not connect with me as much as I would have liked it to. Although I am passionate about architecture, I wanted to create something with a deeper and more conceptual meaning behind it.

 

View my Architectural Miniatures here.

 

 

Artist Inspiration Continued

Inspired by Pierre Voisin, I decided to keep to a limited colour palette and create a few pieces in his minimalistic style along with my own shapes and designs, contrasting my architectural drawings greatly. When I was initially mind-mapping the brief  ‘Human Imprint’, I created a concept that referred to how a lack of a human’s imprint on a person can cause that person to become lonely. In my minimalistic designs, I wanted to try to capture that concept in a less figurative way.

When I was initially mind-mapping the brief  ‘Human Imprint’, I created a concept that referred to how a lack of a human’s imprint on a person can cause that person to become lonely. In my minimalistic designs, I wanted to try to capture that concept in a less figurative way.

In my first experiments using this new concept, I created graphic, minimalistic hand prints using the same colour palette as Voisin. As I was not sure whether black on white or white on black would be more effective, I decided to try both in two separate pieces. As Voisin uses a lot of contrasting lines in his work, I chose to replicate that but by using a dotted line instead to create a feeling of fragmentation and almost a disconnection within a connection.

I believe that these pieces worked really well, especially when displayed together as their direct contrast shows through. I think my attempt to portray loneliness was quite effective as you can see that although all of the hands are connected, the line is fragmented, representing a fragile bond between them.

In my next set of experiments, I wanted to be even more minimal in my approach by only using one hand shape per piece instead of four. As creating two directly contrasting paintings worked extremely well in my last experiment, I decided to do the same in this experiment to see if it as effective in this new form.

As singular hands, I feel as if they are just as effective as my previous pieces. Inspired by Voisin, I have used the same fragmented line from my initial experiments and positioned it in the hands instead of outside. This represents the loneliness we feel within ourselves how our fragmented relationship with our own being.

Overall, I think that my experimentation with minimalism and a limited colour palette worked really well and the inspiration took from Pierre Voisin worked in favour of my pieces. I will continue with this design I have created to make some new and exciting variations of it.

 

View my Minimalistic Hand Experiments here.

 

Expressive Faces

After experimenting on a smaller scale in my architectural drawings, I wanted to attempt to work on a bigger scale to see what I could create. I chose to use A4 as it is big enough to loosen up my drawings and small enough to contain my drawings. As I had been using very perfect lines and small details, I wanted to break free from that rigid technique and create more expressive, flowing drawings.

As I did in my hand experiments, I wanted to link these drawings into my concept of loneliness within a person and the lack of a humans imprint on them. Loneliness is not only felt when you are alone, it can be felt even when you are with people. Some people can have bonds with others, yet still feel alone in this world. I wanted to represent this by intertwining the faces until they had become one but I also made sure the expression in their eyes were uncomfortable and anxious.

 

As I love creating abstract and unrealistic faces, I chose to use that love to make much more ambitious drawings and pushing my expressive style to the maximum. I wanted my experiments to complicated in its lines but minimalistic in its colour palette so the colour does not distract from my drawings.

Overall, I really love these drawings and I found them really enjoyable to create. As I usually work on a smaller scale, it was a little out of my comfort zone to work a little bigger, especially using a more expressive style than I am used to.

After creating many of these drawings, I decided that instead of creating more, to digitalise them and see how they look on a screen rather than on paper. I found that I actually prefer these experiments as digital images as it takes away the physical form of a sketchbook and makes the drawings feel more whole as a piece.

In an attempt to create new pieces without creating new drawings, I started to experiment with my existing pieces in photoshop to see what effects I could give the drawings. In my previous hand experiments, I used both black on white and white on black and placed them together to show a direct contrast. This influenced me to try the same for my face experiments. In photoshop, I inverted the colours of my drawings which changed the black to white and the white to black. Surprisingly, this worked a lot better than I expected it to and I now prefer these experiments to my initial black on white experiments.

When placed together, the two variations of the same drawing compliment each other really nicely and I feel that together they create a better piece than one drawing alone.

Overall, I love how these experiments have turned out and it has encouraged me to stick with the same colour palette of black and white throughout this project as it works really well with both my concept and my drawing style.

 

To view my Face Experiments, click here.

Miniature Hand Experiments

After working on a larger scale to create my hand designs, I wanted to see how effective it would be if I experimented with the same design but on a smaller scale. Using the same concept and colour palette, I used the same size sketchbook as my miniature architecture experiments to which linked these drawings back to my starting point.

Inspired by my previous hand experiments, I used dotted lines to join my hands. I also create the same style of piece twice but inverted the colours as it worked extremely well when I first experimented with this design. As it was on a smaller scale, it changed the overall feel of my design and the hands looked different to when they are on a larger scale. Due to this, I decided to draw my hands a little bigger which meant I was only able to fit two hands on one page. Fortunately, this worked to my advantage as it inspired me to add more to this design to compliment the concept.

When I had finished my hands, I felt that they looked a little plain and I wanted to try something different and a little more figurative. Following up on my theme of loneliness, I wanted to show in a figurative way how human interaction for some people can be difficult and how someone can be lonely even when human interaction could be readily available. As to me, the hand represented the human, I decided to draw minimalistic people within these hands so I am able to portray my concept a little easier. I drew my humans minimalistically as I did not want to create too much detail that it would distract the viewer from the other elements of my drawing.I incorporated the dotted line I had used in previous experiments as it worked really well with my concept. In this drawing, I used the dotted line as an attempt of connection between one human to the other, the line going from one brain to one back, ignoring a request for interaction.

I incorporated the dotted line I had used in previous experiments as it worked really well with my concept. In this drawing, I used the dotted line as an attempt of connection between one human to the other, the line going from one brain to one back, ignoring a request for interaction.

Overall, my first miniature experiments, in my opinion, did not work as well as my larger scale paintings but continuing these experiments helped me to develop my concept and my drawings to an end piece that has inspired me to create more work like it. I feel that on a smaller scale, drawings such as small, detailed houses (from my first experiment) work a lot better than small-scale replications of my initial hand experiments.

 

View my Miniature Experiments here.

Overlaying Experiments

As I really enjoyed creating my expressive face experiments and I believe that they were really effective, I wanted to use them in a different way than just editing them in photoshop. Whilst scanning my hand experiments, I noticed the plain white inside the outline which gave me the idea that I could use them as an overlay. This can be done by cutting out the hands and laying them on top of my expressive drawings. By doing this, I could see if the hands would look good with a complicated pattern within, rather than a plain white.

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I decided to cut out hands from two of my experiments, the singular hand and the 4 hands joined together to see if it would create a different effect depending on the amount of space that is covered.

Overall, I am really happy with my experiments as they gave my hands more dimension and surprisingly, gave them a 3D effect when overlayed. I also love how the faces behind the hands look as if they are trapped inside the hands and as the hands represent a being, it’s as if they are trapped inside themselves. When someone is lonely, sometimes they shut themselves inside their own head to keep themselves company. I feel that these experiments represent this concept really well.

Spray Paint Experiments

Throughout this project, I have kept my mediums quite basic, using paints, fine liners and pens to experiment with. Inspired by my overlaying experiments, I decided to create a stencil of my hand design to use with spraypaint. As I have never used spray paint and stencils before, these experiments were a huge learning curve for me and has encouraged me to use more spray paint in the future.

I used my stencil in numerous different ways which gave my experiments variety and created different textures and tones to work upon. The first way I used the stencil was by simply placing the stencil on the page and spraying over it. This created a solid black hand shape. Another way I used my stencil was by printing my stencil onto my page after spraying through it to create an inverted version of spraying through the stencil. I also used the off-cuts from making the stencil to spray and print the hand design onto my page which created a completely different texture to just using the stencil normally.

At the beginning of my experimentation, I decided to keep my drawing simple and small to see if drawing on top of the spraypaint is effective.

After realising that using white pen to draw over my hands was effective, I decided to try and create some drawings with a bigger link to my concept. Inspired by my final drawing for my miniature experiments, I drew the same figures from that experiment into my spraypaint experiments.

Overall, I think that these experiments are my favourite out of all of the experimentation I have done for this project. The spray paint has allowed me to create uncontrolled tone and texture which was quite out of my comfort zone, considering all of my other experiments have been so precise. Yet I am able to control my drawings which brings the pieces together and makes something that is so unrefined, refined.

 

To view my Spray Paint Experiments, click here.

 

Digitalising My Sketchbooks

As a lot of my work was very graphic design orientated, I decided that the best way to present my work would be on a screen in a digital sketchbook. This was a completely new process to me as I have never digitalised my work to this extent before but I wanted to show my work in it’s best form which I believed would be digitally.

I began this process by scanning all of my experiments into my computer and editing them in photoshop to make sure the levels were correct and they looked just like the pieces in my sketchbook. Once all my images were cropped and perfect, I uploaded them to a website that specialises in creating online magazines and books. This allowed me to put my images together in a professional looking book that can be accessed online.

I am really happy with the outcome I have from digitalising my images as my drawings and paintings as it has made my project come together to a professional looking resolution. My work looks cleaner and more ‘put together’ when digitally scanned.

 

Conclusion

Overall, I am really happy with my experimentation throughout this project as it has allowed me to create some interesting pieces. I believe that I have been able to accurately portray my theme in an exciting way which I have presented professionally in an online sketchbook.

My favourite pieces in this project were the experiments involving my hand design and my minimalistic drawings of people as I think they were the most successful at showing my theme.

These designs have inspired me to take my graphic design ideas further and I would love to create clothing or tote bags with these designs on, repeated as a pattern.