Year 1 Illustration Subject Introduction: Amelia Johnstone 2012

1. The Subject
Amelia Johnstone MA RCA 2012

3. „Every morning I jump out of bed
and stepon a land mine. The
landmine is me. After the
explosion, Ispend the rest of
the day putting the pieces
together.‟
Ray Bradbury

4. • "It is only by drawing often, drawing
everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine
"It is only by drawing often,
drawing everything, drawing
incessantly, that one fine day
you discover to your surprise
that you have rendered
something in its true
character.”
Camille Pissarro

5. Drawing is a vital part of illustration and an
illustrators’ existence, the world we perceive
around us comes through the way we draw it
what we draw from it, and what we are drawn
to.
The variety of ways of drawing is endless, it
is an
experimental process using different tools and
ways
of looking to find new images, to personify the
inanimate and to trigger a reaction, most
importantly to communicate or portray
something,
to imply or divulge meaning.

6. In this project you are asked to explore
your
ways of working, to create new ways, you are
asked to observe and obsess about drawing
processes enlivening every ordinary mark
with
personality, so it speaks.
•
•

7. • Words to draw with:
• Scratchy
• Fluid
• Tentative
• Bold
• Crisp
• Elegant
• Organic
• Active
• Fragile
• Brash
• Technical
• Sticky
• Solid
• Floating
• Spongy
• Mechanical
• Quick
• Sporadic
• Casual
• Decorative

8. • Tentative
• Slight
• Creeping
• Slick
• Perfect
• Continuous
• Blotchy
• Anal
• Fragile
• Ghostly
• Irksome
• Riddled
• Detailed
• Abstract
• Obtuse
• Stuttering
• Staccato
• Pianissimo
• Delicate
• Musical

9. • Talkative
• Secretive
• Descriptive
• Tiresome
• Natural
• Diseased
• Destructive
• Animal
• Feral
• Flippant
• Theatrical
• Meek
• Unassuming
• Bashful
• Insolent
• Exquisite
• Monotonous
• Playful
• Precise
• Accurate

11. „When I draw I'm conscious of
looking for a lively line –
though what defines a lively
line is difficult to say – but a
bald outline would not be very
interesting, obviously. A
dipping pen is good – the weight
of the line alters with the
amount of pressure you put on it,
so you get a bit of variety.‟
John Burningham

12. The words to draw by will form the basis for your
drawing practice.
The aim of
this project is to develop and open your minds to the
possibilities within drawing, how to use drawing as a research
method and how to find your own ways of working.
* Drawing, and its possibilities will define, and underpin your practice as
an illustrator.
* ‘Good’ drawing as an idea will be looked at.
NB: What makes a good illustration is very different from what is generally
considered to be good drawing. Illustration is the practice of creating
communicative talking drawings, but also the discipline of exploring the
possibilities of drawing. What can it be? What is it?

13. Drawing and theory are the
foundations for your
studio practice. Both drawing and
theory directly, but
sometimes quietly, feed practice
modules. The learning
process is therefore cumulative,
rigourous and exciting.

15. 1. Making your mark
2. Tools
3. Personification
4. Consequences ‘Six words to
story’
5. Drawing from everyday life
6. Drawing with scissors
7. Shadow pictures
8. 3D drawing
9. Story Drawing
10.Thumbnails Critique

17. „Drawing is putting a line
around an idea‟
Henri Matisse

18. “An artist's early work is inevitably
made up of a mixture of tendencies
and interests, some of which are
compatible and some of which are in
conflict. As the artist picks his way
along, rejecting and accepting as he
goes, certain patterns of enquiry
emerge. His failures are as valuable
as his successes: by misjudging one
thing he conforms something else,
even if at the time he does not know
what that something else is.”
Bridget Riley.
•

19. „I can't explain myself, I'm
afraid, Sir, because I'm not
myself you see.‟
From ‘Alice in Wonderland’
Lewis Carroll

20. {The hope is that you will never
feel like this. Or
that more importantly eventually
you will never
have to feel like this again.}

21. In this first part of this project you
are asked to unlock the
expressive side of your minds, do not
revert to type or to
what you already know, begin to explore
the ways in which
you make your mark.
Using the list of ‘Words to draw with’
begin to explore the adjectives, what
do these words imply? How can you
describe
these words through marks alone?

22. From ‘Life in the woods’
by Henry David Thoreau

23. „Illustration is a couplet of image
and text, one next to, beside or
inspired by the other, it is chiefly
words which inspire the imagination
to create the image. There is a
process beyond the literal which
makes the words and image do very
separate things whilst lying next to
each other. They are not in love with
each other but are siblings with
complementary or contradictory
personalities. Sometimes they
disagree, grow up or grow out of each
other, other times they run away and
become something else, or happily
come home and converse again‟
Amelia Johnstone MA RCA 2008

24. Using this notion, the word without the
other is a
floating thing, we need the word to
ground the image,
to create the catalyst, to compound.
„What is really important about illustration
however is that it can work both ways. You
can start with words and end up with a
picture, or begin with a picture and end up
with words. Either way one cannot live
happily without the other, once the process
of picture-making has happened words spoken
or written, „spring up already doubled in
themselves‟.
Amelia Johnstone MA RCA 2008

25. During drawing sessions you willoftenhear
Texts read aloud, these texts will help to take
your
mind away from the immediate surroundings.
They are not for you to illustrate, just to
help
take you „a long way away…‟ however, as the
drawing sessions develop this relationship will
shift, and your perceptions will enlarge your
view of the drawing world.
Texts will build a bibliography, to sit with
your
drawing understanding, a subliminal compost for
your drawing.

26. ...enliven your mind,
imagination, eyes, soul and
ears and enter your
illustration world…

27. …drawing is the key

28. …no need to knock

29. …just unlock

30. „…a reality was not given to us
and thereis none, but we
ourselves haveto create one, if
we want toexist: and it will
not be the same one forever,
butwill continuously undergo
infinite changes.‟
Luigi Pirandello