The Brief

Assignment three is split into two sections. The first explores visual research as a way of collecting visual information and creating drawings that would be applied to a specific context to function as illustrations. The second part of the assignment focuses specifically on the development and application of the understanding gained through the reportage process.

Choose one of these possible uses for your drawing:

• A poster to promote an event or activity.
• An editorial illustration in a newspaper or magazine that describes the event or location.
• A historical piece in a textbook for children that would be relevant to your location.
  

Collecting information

I started by going back to my original route. This time, I expanded my route by observing inside the house and drawing things that interest me. My first drawing was of my daughter lying on the sofa, watching TV. (Figure 1)

It is a cold day, and people are trying to stay warm by drinking tea and working in front of the fireplace.  I am collecting drawings and visual information to see where it takes me in generating ideas for a project.  My second drawing is of blankets and scatter cushions on the sofa. (Figure 2)

I then moved on to drawing the fireplace, the firelighters and the cups of tea standing around.  I am starting to see a theme here although I would still like to include aspects of my route, surroundings and the town I am living in.

Trying to draw a fire has prompted me to explore in my sketchbook with watercolour ink and water to see what effect I can get to create a fire.

I continued to explore until I came to the realisation that I would like to build a narrative around winter and cooking, which can be linked with my town and the location of my route.

Notes, Spider Diagrams and working on my concept

Keeping all my sketches in mind, I jotted down notes to start working on my concept. I established that I would like to make a poster to promote an event or activity, such as a cooking or baking class. The poster should be created in Adobe Illustrator using 3 to 5 colours and be 18 x 24 inches.

The cooking classes are during the winter school holidays in July, and it will be on my original route at the Educational Gardens near the Seahorse Project Aquarium.  The cooking classes are to create conservation awareness of indigenous herbs and plants.

The poster will be used for advertising the event.  I will also make a list of words to generate ideas and find connections between words and images.

Generating ideas

Now I will be generating ideas for my poster.  I have written down many words to describe the event while keeping in mind the location, culture, food of the culture in the Western Cape, animals and landmarks.

Then, I took the list of words and sketched little thumbnails to put my words into pictures.

Now I will look to see if I can find any connections between the pictures and create more thumbnails to create a narrative.

I could see a connection between the star anise, which looks like a fire, and pouring a bowl of soup in front of the fire. The next picture is the crab, which I thought would look great if it wore oven mitts.  Baking with herbs could be emphasised by using fennel instead of icing for a cupcake or using herbs on the chef’s hat as decoration.

Pouring all sorts of herbs (like stars and magic) onto the apple tart.  Creating a character from the coriander leaves.  Using a koeksister as decoration on the cupcake.  A koeksister is a traditional South African dessert.

I then selected my best ideas out of the three and created sketches in the same ratio format as my finished poster size.

I have decided to select the Star Anise Fire concept as my final poster because it communicates the event the best.  Cooking with herbs is the main focus of this event.  Knysna is known for its elephants, but the elephant seems to be too prominent in this poster and takes away from the main idea of the event, which is “Cooking with herbs”.  I really like the “Baking with Herbs” poster of the woman holding the cupcake and having the herbs hanging off the tree like Christmas Decorations.  This could be more fitting if the event was over Christmas time.

The poster was created in Adobe Illustrator in an attempt to keep the design simple and limit the design to five colours.

Overall, I am happy with the concept and poster idea, but I would like to explore the use of colours and composition more.