OUGD504 STUDIO BRIEF FOUR - WATERCOLOUR RESEARCH

Before starting the watercolour drawings research was undertaken into the kind of watercolour style that wants to be achieved. This is to give a guide for when it actually comes to producing the watercolour illustrations, so there is something to follow.

Olechka Design (Etsy). This watercolour illustration doesn't use fine liner outlines as many found online do to give it extra detail, therefore much more detail is placed in the colours used. The depth of colour achieved is also interesting although not many colours have been used, which adds to it's depth as well. This is something to ensure happens in the illustrations for this brief to give them more shape.

Craftberrybush (Society6). This was a real inspiration for the style of watercolour for the islands, as although the only colours used are brown and black, there is a great depth in colour, which gives the detail to the deer. This is something that should be achieved in the islands watercolour illustration, so they don’t just look like blobs.

This is a much more simple watercolour illustration than those above, however still in the flowers themselves you can see the different strengths of paint clearly, which stop the dots from blending into one another.

Zsa Zsa Bellagio. This watercolour illustration has a lot more depth to it, and much more detail as well, whilst also looking more like the kind of illustration that will be produced for this brief. It almost looks like the sea going up against islands, which is an interesting was to draw it, or mountains with a river running through it.  This is a much more abstract approach, however maybe this could be a possibility for the illustrations.

Although these are trees, if you take off the trunk they could just as easily be leafy islands. Simple and few colours have evidently been used to create these simple illustrations, yet due to the depth of colour included in them, they look much more detailed than they actually are. Whereas some watercolour artwork is so detailed it hardly looks like watercolour, these illustrations have a simplistic and almost immature quality to them that makes them obviously still look like they've been producing using watercolour paints, especially with some of the watermarks still being shown, how the paint follows a course through the water on the page. This is a nice quality that these have, giving them a friendly appearance, perhaps something that could be experimented with in the creation process of the illustrations for this brief.

Researching into watercolour painting styles, and thinking about what the aim for the aesthetic of this brief actually is has been really beneficial to key down the styles and aspects of these illustrations above that could work really effectively in this brief. The next stage will be to experiment with different styles of watercolour painting based on the findings from the examples above.