December 2011
17 posts
Jessica X-Y L. Illustration →
jessicaxyl.blogspot.com
I’ve finally updated it! These are all my final pieces, if you’re interested in only those.
Could you teach me how to make that Adventure Time paper craft? It's amazing. o____o
Hellooo! Glad you like that little piece! Well…
1. Plan. Grab a piece of paper, draw a square, draw a circle in that square. Next, draw the characters you want, and position them so that they can all be seen. Neaten it up so you know who goes in front of who and so forth. Now you know who you’re going to make, and how many layers you’ll need. I did an extra process where I made paper base layers, to make sure they slot together correctly.
2. Start making the characters BASED ON LAYERS. Back layers first, front layers last. If you have floating characters (like my Marcy and LSP and Gunter), then you can do those anytime. For simplicity, you’ll need tracing paper, so your characters will be the accurate size. (I did it freehanded, which can work out, but it’s trickier as you have to keep seeing that everything will fit together right.) I drew my characters on paper for a base, then laid sticker paper on top. I did it in a way that would be easiest; for instance, doing the whole body, then the clothes on top. This way you won’t need to worry about lengths of arms and legs etc, because there’s enough skin (as you’ve made pretty much a naked body as your base). You can use normal paper, but be neat with glue!
3. Remember I said back layers first? You also have to keep layering them on top of each other as you go along, just so you know they’re in the right position.
My process, as I understand these might’ve been a bit tricky to follow:
1 - I planned and made paper bases
2 - My background was a blue sky with clouds; I stuck blue sticker paper down on a square paper base. I didn’t stick the clouds down.
3 - The next layer was the Ice King; I made him next but didn’t stick him down!
4 - The next layer was Peebles and Lady Rainicorn. I made them, and made sure they fit with the Ice King.
5 - As each layer is backed up by corrugated cardboard, I made 4 corners and stuck them on the sky background. I also stuck down Lady with Peebles down, and a square with a circle cut out of it on top of that. (It should be mentioned I stuck a sheet of green paper grass down in the inner circle, and the Ice King behind that.) I poked Peebles out through the circle so it looked like they were flying through.
6 - I made Marcy, Finn and Jake, LSP, Gunter and the bee. These were easiest as they were the outside layers. Once done, I positioned them.
7 - I did the clouds (cotton wool) and stuck them down before the characters in step 6.
Hooope that makes sense! I’m going to copy-paste all these instructions into my WIP folder on facebook! If that WIP link doesn’t work, go to my Photo Albums and look for the one entitled “AT Papercraft”. So head there for a visual guide!
November 2011
12 posts
"Tightening up" with art.
Brief 2 has started for University, and after a little chat with my tutor, one piece of advice has made me stop. It was this: DO NOT LOOSEN UP.
I’ve gone through school-taught art, a couple of years in 6th form and only a year of Uni, but all the time we’ve constantly been told by at least one person to “loosen up”, to have more energetic strokes, to create the illusion of movement.
“But”, our tutor Martin said, “but sometimes the right advice is not to loosen up, but to tighten up instead. Make your drawings as neat as possible. Push it so that it’s almost clinical, so that each stroke is clean and perfect.”
“You are a naturally neat worker,” he said, “so why not keep that?”
And yes, he’s right. My sketches and roughs are all pretty neat, though they can get grubby. So as it stands, I’m going to take the neat route. The messy impressionist stuff works for some people, but that’s who they are.
We’re meant to do what makes us happy - that’s how we develop a style that is our own. That’s when we create our better pieces, the ones that we are satisfied with.
So for everyone out there who struggles with being loose sometimes, and is happier being neat - try being ultra neat! See if you’re happy like that. Who knows?
muonbee replied to your photoset: Life drawing at Uni! Week 1 isn’t here because…
Looking great! How long are they each?
Heyy muonbee, thank you so much! :3
Week 2: the first 2 drawings were 10 minutes each, the next 2 were 15 minutes each. The next 2 were half an hour each.
Week 3: 6 5-minute warm up sketches, and 3 half-hour pieces
Week 4: top 3 were 10-minute warm up sketches, the bottom-right was half an hour; the A2 piece was an hour.
