Conscoius Creatives & Grow Wild Uk Live Brief - Initial Ideas

Initial Ideas

I decided to focus my project around wildflowers. Inspired by my research I sketched out ideas surrounding three topics: Xeriscapes, Cycle of Life and UK Pollinators. All the sketches/ideas had a similar delicate and illustrative style, so I knew that my project will likely include creating illustrations. I wanted to make the outcome for this brief both educational/informative I some way, as well as something that is beautiful to look at.

After deciding to base my project around 'The Pollinators', wildflowers which are the best food source for pollinator insects such as butterflies, beetles, bees and moths, I decided to illustrate these wildflowers. The reason for choosing Illustration was that I wanted to give the project a little personal touch, and by drawing the wildflowers by hand, I was able to give them a more delicate and natural feel. The style of drawing I choose is quite soft and innocent, using rounded lines and thin strokes. I choose this to further demonstrate the idea of the wildflowers being delicate and vulnerable, which is what they are within the British habitat.

After scanning in my drawings, I converted them into vectors using 'Image Trace' so that I could easily start playing around with colours and compositions.

One of my initial ideas included a play on the name 'The Pollinators'. I thought that this sounded like a group of superheroes, so I decided to try out this ideas. I began by looking at the style of comic drawing and the way colour is used.

I found that in comic drawing, bright and bold colours are used, and a black outline is applied. I went back to my drawings of wildflowers, and manipulated them to include these comic drawing features. I utilised a double black outline to allow me to add colour in between the outline, which I believe makes the connection and influence from comic drawings more obvious. I also used photography of the flowers as reference for the colours used, and simply choose slightly more bold and exaggerated colours to again show the connection to comic drawings.

After adding colour to all my flower drawings, I now wanted to look at typography. Taking inspiration from comic book covers, I wanted to create a bold title/name 'The Pollinators', which could then be applied to my composition of flowers and make the group of flowers look like a team poster of superheroes. I tried both comic inspired typefaces and my own hand-written titles. In the end I decided that the comic inspired typeface looked more professional and appropriate to communicate a comic book style than my own hand-written attempts.

Next I attempted to compose all the elements I have been working on into a composition that would resemble a superhero team poster of wildflowers. I added a 3D affect to the name 'The Pollinators' to strengthen the inspiration/reference to comic books. I composed the flowers in a growing garden like style, as if they were all together and a 'team'. I had also started to draw in additional greenery, such as leaves and grass like elements.

After composing all the elements I have been working on, I realised that I imagined this idea to work better than it was. Although I had tried to take inspiration from the comic book style and applied elements from that style into my work, the result was just not communicating the style in the way I had wanted it to. Peer feedback also stated that "it's not working". Also, "the drawings are not comic-book style enough, maybe if you re-drew them, characterised the flowers or something, it would look more like what you're going for". The feedback made me realise that when I drew the flowers initially, my intention was to make them look soft and delicate, not strong and powerful like a comic book and superhero style should be. This is where this idea fell short. I decided that I will scrap the comic book inspired/superhero influence, and go back to my initial soft/delicate drawings. Going forward, I wanted to play with the idea of wildflowers being important but overlooked, and portray them in a more visually warm and natural manner.