Work Based Learning - United In Death + evaluations/targets




For my work based learning project I had to create a finished piece as part of the Cheltenham Illustration Awards as part of their Unity theme. I started off by coming up with different concepts to base my illustration around. I ended up deciding to create a piece with a historical theme, I wanted to depict a scene with multiple historical figure remembered from history for uniting their people. I chose individuals from different countries and era's since I wanted the piece to fit into the theme of unity and everyone coming together. I wanted the piece to have an ethereal feeling so I decided to depict each of the individuals as undead  going together to create the them of being united in death.



I started off concepting out rough sketches of how I wanted to lay out my piece. I then decided to ask for help from people on my course with posing reference. Once I had a with poses I liked nailed down I decided to refine the sketch into some line art which I would use as a guide for my final piece.


Once I had some refined line art I scanned it in and digitised the lines using the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. The line art would mostly be used as a guide for where colour was going so I did not spend time adding line variation since it the line art would end up tuned off anyway. I then took the digital line art into Photoshop to colour up and that's where the piece really came together. I went with ethereal colours to go with the undead theme and added shading using a specular brush giving it a faded look. I also went in and added some arches into the background to help give the idea of some sort of environment.

Overall I am very happy with how my final piece came out and I think it matches the unity theme. There was a lot of confusion early on when I was trying to decide how to realise my piece and I struggled with trying traditional work and not feeling confident with my skill. I tried doing all the line work using ink and I was finding it hard to like how it was going. It worked out in the end since my piece ended up having no line art in the end but I still want to work on my traditional skills in the future.
 I think I will set myself the target of working through a sketch book with only pencil and pen over the upcoming summer holidays and that should help my confidence going into the final year.

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