Today’s lesson we started experimenting with maps. 

I found this quick activity really helpful. Up until now I hadn’t even put much thought into my map so I’m glad we were made to do it in class. It put into perspective the kind of composition I’ll need to use for my map.

There is more evidence of my iterations and ideas in my workbook but this is the idea I think I’ll develop. 

The idea is to have the milk spilling out of the cup in a dynamic way to illustrate the movement of direction from A to B to C. Looking at this now, I would like to rearrange the layout to make the blue background appear as if its the waterfront. 

Thinking about what we talked in during class. I think the simpler the better. I don’t want too much information or symbolism. A lot of people used landmarks throughout their map, but I’ve already used these in my illustrations so I would rather not repeat these elements.

Refining my illustrations - starting to consider layout

I’ve finally come to the conclusion of the direction I’m taking with my illustrations. 

Fidels

Left - I first produced this drawing which is just an iteration of my spilling drink composition for interim. And then after brainstorming a few elemental ideas I decided to add the Cuba street fountain as a landmark, which could represent the area Fidel’s is in.

Right - I didn’t like the placement of the fountain in the first composition so I started moving it around and somehow ended up with this visual integration of two elements. Immediately after this I started to get a better idea of the way I want to execute the rest of my illustrations, and I’m starting to feel more confident with my choice of imagery. 

I have also just added some random type over the top as a way to start thinking about how it will look. Obviously I have two very seperate pages but I don’t want to leave type to the last minute and find that I have no where to fit it. So through my process I’m just trying out random layouts whilst referring back to the layout artist model in my workbook. 

(add image of artist model)

SHAKE

continuing from the Fidel’s illustrations that I was really happy with, I’ve now created a similar play on visual elements using the research I had for SHAKE. The cafe looks out onto the waterfront so I think thats a perfect landmark to use. This illustration is breaking the border of the composition a little bit more and isn’t so confined. This is probably the only thing I like about the image so far.

Andre’s feedback on this specific illustration was that its too ambiguous, could be any shake and any location. There’s nothing special about the way it looks and the reference to waterfront is so lost. So I went back and did some quick sketches (evidence in workbook). And will re-iterate this later on.

MIDNIGHT ESPRESSO

Since I decided on Midnight Espresso so late down the line, my illustrations are suffering a little bit and I have a long way to go with ideas. I completed this illustration really quickly (using a reference image found online) just in order to get the wheels turning in my head about development, and just to have something to put into my first printed draft to show in class.