Artist Research

Before starting on this exercise I wanted to do some research and look at the work of illustrators who give instructions in their work.  A lot of the examples I found were around cooking – this made sense as it is something that we all use step by step guides for every day.

Blueberry Muffins – Benedicte Caillat – Image Source

I really like the above illustration by Benedicte Caillat. I think it is very interesting as it is not the typically step by step as in that she has placed the mixing bowl in the middle surrounded by all of the ingredients and instructions. It is still clear however – you can clearly understand that you add all of those to bowl before moving down the the baking tray. I really like her use of line and colour – it shows that even though it is an instructional diagram, it can still be pleasing to the eye.

Felicita Sala – Image Source

Next I chose this illustration by Felicita Sala. I really love the look of this, again the illustrations are stylised but the instructions are even clearer in this example. The clean white background with clear text helps with this. There is also a directional arrow to help show the next part of the same step.

How to Eat Ramen – Nicolau – Image Source

This one is quite different to the two above, the illustration style is quite minimal when it comes to the figure but it helps the viewer clearly understand what is going on in each step. I like the contrast between the block colour of the figure and the outline of his nose – this way you can see when he is ‘smelling’ the ramen. The contrast between the figure and the black ramen bowl means that the food is always the main focus of the image. I think its really fun but still easy to follow!

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For this exercise I chose to focus on creating the instructions for ‘making a cup of tea’. After doing some research and finding the examples above I made a list of the steps I would include in the finished drawing – what are the steps to making a cup of tea?

1. Put a teabag in a cup
2. Boil the kettle and add hot water to the cup
3. Wait for 2 minutes and remove bag
4. Add milk and sugar
5. Enjoy!

I know that there will be some purists that would add steps to this but for the sake of the exercise I thought it was clear for someone who had never made a cup of tea before.
I started making some sketches within my book for each of the steps – I used reference images of polka dot teacups and a kettle and based my sketches off those. I decided I wanted to use pen and watercolour for the final illustrations.

After I was happy with my sketches I started working on the layout of the illustration. This is something I should definitely have taken more time and consideration on as in the finished illustration there is a lot of blank space – I also wish that I had taken more time considering the text. I knew I wanted to hand write it as I had decided to work traditionally for this exercise but I didn’t spend enough time considering size and layout. I think the final illustration was left feeling quite empty, as my initial illustrations are quite small and because I put them onto an A3 sheet they do feel quite lost.

It is quite frustrating to me because I was happy with the illustrations – but it was the actual design aspect I had struggled on again. I do feel like my skill as an illustrator is building from the course but it has definitely shown me just how much I still have to learn – especially in the realm of design (and that I should plan better).

Update;
After writing this post the finished piece was playing on my mind, because I know where it failed and I know I could fix it so I returned to work on it again. Please note that the finished piece is perhaps not as refined as it could be, but I did my best with the time I had!
I didn’t want to leave those big awkward white spaces and unfortunately I don’t have a lot of drawing resources available to me at the moment! I decided the best plan of action was to actually scan the illustrations in and resize/rearrange them digitally. After scanning in the illustrations I did a small clean up of the scan and then started rearranging them in procreate.

Now if I had a little more time to spend on this (I couldn’t justify spending anymore time on it than I already had or other exercises would suffer!) I would have actually done this in Photoshop and altered the contrast so the lines were still as bold as they are on the physical drawings. If I had worked in Photoshop the image would also be a higher resolution because unfortunately when you resize in procreate you do lose a lot of detail – this is of course understandable because the iPad can only do so much (where as a computer running Photoshop can achieve a lot more).

I rearrange the drawings into the layout I had originally planned but at a better scale – leaving a lot less space. I also added some digital text. I would like to learn how to be better at drawing letters because this is definitely a weak point for me!
I added some arrows to indicate the next steps.

The finished piece still has some flaws but compared to the piece I had initially made this is a definite improvement. I should have spent more time on the design at the start as it would have prevented a lot of the issues I had later on. I do feel like I am learning a lot from these mistakes however and I can take what I have learnt forward into future exercises with me.