Tag: A Canny Collective

Guest Artist at A Canny Collectives Exhibition

This was an amazing opportunity I was offered, to be a guest artist with a group named ‘A canny Collective’, who are running an exhibition showcasing their work within a gallery space, all pieces of which have the theme of Valentines, as they planned for it to run on the same week, starting on Monday the 11th.

The group themselves had planned everything out, viewed the space, cleared it out, fixed it up a bit, thought about how they were going to advertise it, made posters/flyers and stuck them up and handed them out around town and within the college, made social media pages and posts, and they just planned out everything that you could think of, that they wanted to have done for the opening night and the gallery space in general.

If you want to read more about their process or experience, you can read about it by clicking:

  • here for Katie Marshals experience
  • here for Phil Hughes
  • here for Nicole Nicholsons
  • and here for Adam Rowlinsons

In a couple of weeks running up to the exhibition, the group had gone to see the place and had tried to plan out where their own work would be set up. They had then realised how much open space they would still have, so had decided to recruit guest artists to fill the extra areas. This had meant that me and another artist called Igor Tavares, would showcase our work at the event, Igor actually live painted on the opening night so there was a next level of entertainment in a sense. 

So with the theme of Valentines, I wanted to focus on self-love in the form of body positivity. Although I feel strong in the message of body positivity, everyone having confidence within their own figures, there was an ulterior motive with these designs, as I wanted to use this project as to better my skills with anatomy, but as I had a shorter timeframe to work with, I decided to illustrate in more of a minimal style.

Using reference imagery and following a tutorial/guide from a video by an artist named Chelsea Gracei (which I had discussed in a previous post, click here to read) from my base sketch, I had formed simple lines to suggest the individual bodies, showing the curves or muscle tones of the specific character. These would then contrast well against the white silhouette of the figure, which was composed against a floral pattern in a circular or diamond shape which would best fit the specific figure.

I do like these illustrations as I feel they are strong, very feminine and I believe they are empowering as they celebrate women of all different figures. I enjoyed working on these pieces as they are more minimal than my usual work, and I feel they are strong, focusing solely on each specific body shape. I did not give these figures any facial features, as I wanted the audience to potentially relate themselves to a certain figure, whereas I believe by giving them faces they would have been less interpretable  I was proud that I was able to create these pieces within a short amount of time as this opportunity, to have my work exhibited within a local exhibition, was too good of an offer to pass up and I’m so appreciative of the group for giving me this chance.

In the future, I would like to expand on this mini project, creating even more body types, potentially drawing more men, as people of all genders, ages etc, do struggle with body positivity, so I would like to make my work all-inclusive, representing people of all different body shapes, no matter what gender, age, ethnicity, etc.

The opening night was good, I was happy to be working on the stall, selling my own work as well as the other artists. I am more of an introvert, so I enjoyed taking a backseat with all of the social interaction. It would have been a good chance to network with other people, but I had enjoyed gaining the experience of selling work one to one with the customers, as it is something I would be interested in doing again in the future, setting a stall up within a market, or even selling at a convention. By working on the stall, I was still able to interact with the people at the event, especially when they would ask if I was ‘Mel, the artist behind the figures’ (I believe they got my name from the zine catalogue that the group had made, so I was taken aback at first like ‘waiiit, HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?) so I feel I did still gain some of the networking side of the experience, but maybe in a less forward sense, meaning that I was not making an effort to go out and socialise but my social interactions ended up happening more naturally.

In conclusion, I do feel I gained a lot of experience from taking part in this exhibition, whether it was working to a shorter time frame, working with themes I do feel strongly about and showing a positive light on all body shapes and sizes, printing and helping set up the space or selling one to one on the stall. I loved being a part of this exhibition and I am so grateful to the Canny Collective group for giving me this opportunity.

If you would like to follow the group, I have shown one of their posts below, but if you would like to follow the artists individually, you can click here for Katie Marshall, here for Nicole Nicholson, here for Phil Hughes and here for Adam Rowlinsons. They are amazing illustrators, so I do recommend giving them a look.

 

Reading List

Hughes, P. (2019). Week 22: Ready to Rumble. [Blog] Vonfrankenstank. Available at: https://philhughesillustrator.wordpress.com/2019/04/19/week-22-ready-to-rumble/ [Accessed 20 Apr. 2019].

Marshall, K. (2019). A Canny Exhibition: How it went. [Blog] Nostic Art. Available at: https://nosticart.wordpress.com/2019/02/20/a-canny-exhibition-how-it-went/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2019].

Nicholson, N. (2019). The Team Behind A Canny Collective. [Blog] Witchita Art. Available at: https://witchitaarts.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/update-a-canny-collective/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2019].

Rowlinson, A. (2019). Valentine’s Exhibition – Set Up. [Blog] AHROW Art. Available at: https://ahrowart.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/valentines-exhibition-set-up/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2019].

Anatomy/Poses

For a recent local exhibition ran by A Canny Collective, which I was a guest artist for, with the theme of love, I decided to focus on self-love in the form of body positivity, so in my pieces, I wanted to illustrate multiple bodies of different shapes and sizes. I am confident with the message behind these pieces as everyone should learn to love and appreciate their own body shapes and sizes, buuuut there was also another reason why I had wanted to draw bodies for this mini project, as I wanted to use it in order to get better at drawing anatomy. Luckily for me, an artist named Chelsea Gracei had posted a video on youtube discussing and showing how she specifically draws anatomy and poses.

Chelsea Gracei is an illustrator who I have followed on social media for a while now. This was the artist who I had taken inspiration from in the #DrawThisInYourStyle challenge on Instagram a month ago when I had redrawn one of her characters. Her style is more cartoony so her figures are not exactly anatomically correct, but she does have enough knowledge on anatomy that she knows how to manipulate it so that her characters are still pleasing to the eye.

In the video, she discusses how she uses oval shapes to form her characters, as it gives a more flowing sense, creating more movement within the character than using a more blocky shape would. Following the artists tutorial, as well as reference images so that I would have a better idea of anatomy, I had tried drawing the first of four figures. The reference image I had used was of my friend and was posted on her private Instagram in confidence, so it would be inappropriate to show that reference image within this post.

The figure I was drawing had bigger hips but a slim waist so I tried to convey this within the oval shapes I was using. The proportions did look a bit off, but I decided to just leave them until I cleaned up the sketch a bit. In the original reference image, both hands were positioned on the hips, but I eventually chose to move them both behind the figure as I wanted the woman’s curves to be the focal point of the piece. I did initially just have one hand on the hip, but I felt the proportions looked weird within the arm without any shading and I had not intended to add and shading as to keep my design minimal, so I ended up just positioning both arms behind the woman’s back.

Once I had an initial sketch down, I tried planning out the background elements, positioning a shape behind the specific character of which I felt would best complement their figures and positioning. I had ended up only creating four pieces as I was working with a short time frame, but in the future, I would like to draw even more body shapes and sizes of all different genders and ethnicities as I would like my work to be inclusive to all.  I still had further refinements to make at this point shown in the images below, but I wanted to have minimal line work, so from the sketches, I had created a white silhouette, which had cut out the figure against its background shape, then I would later line the characters, quite boldly but only using the lines to help define the bodies. The linework would taper off and not exceed the specific shapes as I wanted to keep the characters quite clean and confined to their shapes.

I plan to carry on this explanation of my process within an upcoming post, but as well as discussing my own work, I will also be talking about the exhibition as a whole and my experiences with that.

Moving back to the topic of this post, anatomy and learning from a video by Chelsea Gracei, I do feel that I had learnt from her personal process, creating more organic and flowing body proportions and positions, but I do believe I will still need reference imagery if I am to create more figures in the future, as I feel without, my proportions would end up being very off. I do plan to work on my anatomy skills and knowledge more in the future, but I feel, for the time being, I can work well with Gracei’s process whilst using reference imagery. I do believe that in future projects I will refer back to this artists tips and techniques as I did find them useful whilst working on these figures.

 

Bibliography 

Gracei, C. (2019). How to Draw Poses that Look Natural and Flowy. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alamCiqsIb8 [Accessed 25 Feb. 2019].

All other images within this post are my own unless stated otherwise.