Week 8: Visual Design

Bradgate Park

This week we went on a 'trip' to Bradgate Park which was beautiful despite the chilly weather. The aim was to gather our own references and first hand experiences rather than everybody using the same reference images straight from the first page of google.

I wasn't able to get any sketches done simply because my fingers were too cold to move! Although I did make sure I took pictures of anything and everything that I thought I may need in the future. I didn't worry about making a great photograph to show off I was more interested in just flat out documenting what was in front of me.

The trees in Bradgate Park were glorious and I was certainly in tree heaven- the different shapes and varieties had me stopping every five seconds to take photos..

Something that was pretty obvious when we got there was the autumn colours, and I tried to take down as much mental colour information as I could while I was there as I knew that the photos I took wouldn't replicate the richness of the colours.

A little later on I decided to do some colour thumbnails instead of just drawing from my photos. I tried to apply the colours I remembered and just used the photos as a reminder of colours and a prompt for visuals. I'm not 100% content with the thumbnails themselves but I felt like I was learning while I was doing them as I needed to apply what I understood about colour already and what I could remember from what I saw. I had to be careful with my oranges, browns and yellows when they merged with one another to make sure they didn't look muddy. With a few of my landscape ones I recognised that I really need to work on depth in the landscape- I feel like I have the knowledge of how to achieve depth but I need to apply it in my paintings and that requires more practice.

 

I then managed to find the time to work on my Bradgate final. Considering the amount of time this took me and what I thought I'd learned I'm pretty disappointed with the outcome. Although I don't think its bad, I believe I could get a lot more depth in there and nail the colours better to make it look like harsh and cold winter light while still keeping the warm leaves and plants.

Overall its been a very busy week with not a lot to show for it unfortunately!