This week, I spent my time on this project meeting with Alex and Olivia to plan the details of the structure and shop for materials, and I spent the rest of my time realizing that drawing water bubbles is not actually drawing bubbles, at all. It’s literally just drawing water.
I’ve been studying videos and digital images of water, but I still don’t have an adequate understanding of the way light moves through water, causing the highly contrasting shadows and highlights, so I don’t have finished drawings ready to digitize the way I thought I would.
This week, I’m going to study a bunch more (in person with physical water, not just digital images), gain an understanding of how water moves around and its relationship with light so I can actually draw it, and complete at least one – ideally two or more – bubble sequences for the animation so I can start drawing them digitally next week.
I’ve erased like everything repeatedly because I’ve not liked anything I’ve drawn, so I’ll post photos of the drawing process once I get my life together and figure out what I’m doing.
Here are some bubble studies before I realized I should not, in fact, be drawing bubble studies, and then some photos (somewhat erased out of annoyance) of water that is so not cute because I don’t know how to draw water yet. I don’t like not knowing how to draw things.
And please enjoy a photo from our material research shopping trip, where we explored the malleability of PVC piping, featuring Alex crawling around the floor of a Home Depot:
