OUGD602 - PPP3 - Inspiration and Development - Drawing tablet

Recently, I have been revisiting my old Bamboo Drawing tablet, which I received for my birthday about 4 years ago, before I even came to university. I had never really got into it, because my direction was always with design, and I didn't get the hang of drawing digitally, as I think I was pushing for results similar to that of real pencils and pens and was frustrated when I wasn't achieving results... But recently, I have been watching a lot of online lectures on Skillshare and after the Creative Networks event back in November and seeing Babs Tarr's amazing work, it really inspired me to give it a go again. 

I can feel my heart tug my career in a different direction and I'm coming to the realisation that I have always favoured more illustrative work over more type based work under the Graphic Design umbrella, and in retrospect I might have been better suited to the BA Hons Illustration course. But I also believe that everything happens for a reason, and the Illustration course didn't exist when I decided to pursue Graphic Design at Leeds College of Art... And so now, as I am nearing the end of my time on the course I think it's wise to broaden my skillset and in addition to my illustrative skills concerning hand drawn type, and more graphic-design based skills, I want to develop some basic skills with digital painting. I think this is very useful if I want to pursue a career in the Themed Entertainment industry as that concerns a lot of concept art.

Examples of how concept art informs the Themed Entertainment industry as a Graphic Designer:

http://melodymatheny.com/

http://www.wrenhouse-design.com/#!universal-creative/cm4j

http://www.minalima.com/film-work/prop-design/prop-concepts-harry-potter-2

I attempted a go at this over Christmas when I was developing ideas for my Context of Practice module however this time I am revisiting with a bit more ideas as to what I can achieve.

I found that studying Babs' work not only gave me inspiration, but some pointers as to how to go about mastering the drawing tablet as a medium. I also watched a few of these tutorials on youtube:

I found these tutorials really helpful, particularly the landscape tutorial as it taught me that the main thing with drawing on the graphics tablet is the ability to layer up the different strokes, even utilising the different layers in Photoshop to create a solid, dense effect.

I decided to draw something I knew how to draw and that I doodle often - a human eye:

It's not brilliant or by any means a finished piece, but it taught me quite a lot about the tablet. It's based off my own eye as reference, I was using a mirror. I decided to have a go at some more facial features as practice for shadow and light.

Then I decided to join it to a mouth:

And then into a full face:

It strangely bares resemblance to my own face in a creepy, starey way. I decided to call it a night, but this is definitely the start of a new skillset that I wish to develop and add to my portfolio - I need to develop these skills further.