Visual Language - Ska

For the visual language studio brief I picked ska music, thinking I could experiment with portraits of skinheads and that distinctive style. The first image I made was the centre portrait. Working quick with a marker straight onto paper made proportions and head shape very difficult to get down accurately, and although this particular image has character, I was disappointed with how it turned out. I feel it looks badly drawn, the imperfections adding nothing beneficial to it. I want to get better at portraits and people, especially when drawing straight pen to paper. My favourite drawing is the skanking man at the bottom. I really love the energy he has and his proportions were more accurate, creating an believable body form, the shape of him dancing making an interesting image. I could try and experiment with exaggerating certain parts of this figure, emphasising his movement and energy.

I took these dancing men further and scaled them up, again working quickly with just a marker. I believe the most effective outcome was again the most accurate, the bottom right figure depicting a likeness to a real life human form. In the others, the off proportions take away from the personality of the character, the bottom right being too heavy with small legs, and the centre top also having a heavy torso and large head. These inaccuracies did nothing in portraying the movement or action the figure would have been going through. I also tried to redraw the previous portrait which turned out better in my opinion, the face shape looking more natural and the absence of facial features creating an intimidating presence many feel towards skinheads. 

Taking the skanking men one step further I adopted a square brush and ink. After watching a video of Picasso drawing a bull with only a few strokes, elegantly capturing the form of the creature with simple and swift movement  I was inspired to try a simple thing. Each part of the figure is created using one stroke, and although they have ended up taking on a stick man form, the simplicity is somewhat appealing. In all I wasn't too happy with these but they were an interesting experiment none the less. Makes me appreciate the actual difficulty in capturing a form in as few lines as possible. 

Staying with the brush and ink and fast drawing, I made these images of instruments with a rounded brush this time. I really love these, they are by far my favourite outcomes from this whole little project. I think the brush strokes give them an energetic quality, particularly the shape of the saxophones, and I believe a viewer can almost see them being played by a dancing musician on stage among a ska band. In terms of creation, the brush and ink lends itself to loose image making and the inconsistency makes for an exciting process. I used the same reference image for most of these, yet each outcome is wildly different, the brush making different lines each time. 

I plan on experimenting more with different lines qualities for the extension task, as well as trying to improve my portrait and figurative abilities. Capturing likeness and human form in general is a great task and one I am determined to master.