I. Digital Texture and Hand-Drawn Value Scales
I made a scale of 9 gray shades in 3 categories in illustrator, and made two more scales under those shades. I photographed patterns from my surroundings for one scale, and created another scale with my hand-drawn patterns. I put them together as one scale with three sub-scales in Photoshop.
I improved my hand-drawn scale by getting rid of all black strokes and, more importantly, duplicating the patterns to darken each panel. The edits made the gaps between the panels bigger, and therefore brought more shades to the scale. The gray scale, in general, became more plausible.
II. Gray Patterns
I made 18 planes of patterns in Illustrator with each of the gray pattern in my photographed and hand-drawn scales.
<Hand Drawn Gray 5>
<Photographed Gray 4>
III. Figure Drawing
I drew a female model during my life drawing session with a focus on the composition and shades of the portrait. I paid extra attention to her muscles, because they created organic yet complex shades which I found beautiful and interesting. I included some of the background and surrounding objects as well, to capture the whole scene in which the model is present.
IV. Collage
I used 9 hand-drawn gray patterns for my gray scale collage. I aimed to capture the dynamic layers of shades, especially on the figure’s muscles and the fabric underneath her. The density of the pattern increases towards the bottom of the drawing, creating an analogy to the direction of weight in the figure, as the figure’s firm sitting pose has a feeling of heaviness and a downward motion. The darker, denser gray indicates a stronger, louder presence of gravity. I made the background light and loose to keep the focus of the collage on the figure at the center. I didn’t use any of my photograph patterns in order to create an organic, coherent, and analogue feelings in the collage. In the future, I’d like to get rid of all the black edges and only use shades, in order to make a more organic collage.
