Workshop Four - Taxonomy of Birds

Research

Charley Harper

Harper's way of illustrating is very stylised and simplified. The illustration above shows how he can do the bare minimum bit still show the characteristics of each bird so that they're still recognisable.
http://www.charleyharperprints.com/


Derek Eads

This illustrator is very good at making collections of small illustrations, usually to do with films/actors.
http://society6.com/artist/derekeads
http://derekeads.tumblr.com/


Adventure Time

This cartoon from Cartoon Network is very stylised and like Harper does very simplified characters like Jake the Dog, you can tell he's a dog but he is very simplified.
http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/tv_shows/adventuretime/index.html


James Curran

http://www.slimjimstudios.com/

To start the workshop off we were told that we were going to the museum to sketch birds which I was looking forward to in one way because it meant I could work on my drawing skills though I thought it would be better if the birds were alive and were flying around and landing on people whilst they're drawing. Firstly we were asked to do quick line and tonal work and then to choose one bird and go into a meditational state and draw every last inch of it, I chose a magpie to draw because I wanted to challenge myself and try and still get different tones black. Once this was done we were told to stylise the image we'd just made is as many ways as possible. When I looked at my illustration of the Magpie I realised two things: one - it had a cocky eyebrow raised and two - that it's tail defines it, because though the most recognisable thing about a magpie is it's black and white feathers but without the tail it's quite hard to tell it apart from a black and white image of any bird. So with the raised eyebrow the magpie looked a bit roughish/cocky so I thought he could be like a bandit/criminal, and this fitted with the colours of black and white. So firstly I did lots of quick sketches using various mediums and styles to just see what I could do in a little bit of time, then I worked more on turning the magpie into more of a character. In the end, inspired by the workshop before, I made the magpie, Clockwork Orange Magpie. Then using the images of Charley Harper as inspiration I tried to make the magpie out of simple shapes, and using the fact of the tail, I could make the body pretty much any shape and as long as the tail was added with the black and white of course it looked like a magpie.