Street Art
Research point
Identify examples of street art on the walls near you. If you live in a rural community this might be a problem as street art tends to be largely an urban phenomenon. If necessary, pick some examples from the references below or through your own research.
Write a short commentary about how this work interacts with the environment. How important is the context to understanding what the work is trying to do? Reflect on whether you think a particular piece of graffiti is ‘art’ or just vandalism.
Use your learning log to document your reflections.
Artists online
Herakut
Blu: Large-scale illustrations spanning wall pieces, animations and sketchbook work
http://www.blublu.org
Lucy McLauchlan: Contemporary artist working on large-scale illustrative pieces
http://www.lucy.beat13.co.uk
Street Art in Lisbon
http://www.gau-lisboa.blogspot.co.uk
Crono Project: Large-scale street art project in Lisbon
http://cargocollective.com/crono
Wooster Collective Celebrating street art
http://www.woostercollective.com
Banksy: Stencils and other interventions
http://www.banksy.co.uk
Slinkachu: The Little People Project
http://www.slinkachu.com
Faile
Photocopy/poster artist
http://www.faile.net
Invader: Space invader-inspired mosaics
http://www.space-invaders.com
Jorge Rodriguez Gerada: Large-scale drawings
http://www.jorgerodriguezgerada.com
Ben Eine: Large-scale typography
http://www.einesigns.co.uk
Ericailcane: Large-scale illustrative work
http://www.ericailcane.org
JR: Giant photography pieces
http://www.jr-art.net
Camilla Watson: Photography printed onto walls
http://www.camillawatsonphotography.net
Bast: Street collage and posters
http://www.bastny.com
Knitta: Documenting guerilla knitting around the
world
http://www.flickr.com/photos/knittaplease
Edgar Mueller: 3D pavement chalk drawings
http://www.metanamorph.com
Sam3: Large-scale murals
http://www.sam3.es
Scrawl Collective: A network of grafitti and street artists
working on paper
http://www.scrawlcollective.co.uk
Street Art Utopia: A blog documenting street art from around
the world
http://www.streetartutopia.com
Suggested reading
Gavin, Francesca (2007) Street Renegades: New Underground Art
London: Laurence King.
Street art covered by The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/streetart
Architectural Illustration
Architecture as a discipline uses drawing as a way to describe buildings and structures. Architectural illustrators are employed by architects, heritage centres and property-based businesses. Illustration can do important things that photography cannot, and is used in two main ways:
- to draw up plans and diagrams. This uses technical language and techniques aimed to objectively and accurately represent the topography of a building and its parts.
- to visualise proposed projects and buildings – imagining the built environment.
Illustrators need to have an eye for detail, understand proportion and perspective, have good observational skills and a drawing style that can convey complex structures. However not all architectural illustration is technical and dry.
Different architectural illustrators approach the task of documenting visual space and the built environment in different ways. They differ in choice of drawing approach, and how the perspective and materials used relates to the architecture itself:
- some are driven by the ideas that drawing and illustration offers
- some by the ideas inherent in the architectural styles they’re representing.
They may produce very different effects supporting or contradicting the ideas underlying the buildings, for example:
- glossy images used by a developer to suggest the idea of luxury
- approaches may seem at odds with the spaces they’re representing.
Project 2.3 Architectural Illustration: Port of London Authority and Walkie Talkie
Drawn image with white gouache and pencil over the photo
Walkie Talkie and Port of London Authority Building
Shard and Walkie Talkie from hotel lift
London Landmarks
Key Resources on architectural illustration
The Society of Architectural Illustrators
Represents ‘professionals who bring architecture to life’. Their illustrators / SAI members A–Z section shows a wide range of different approaches.
www.sai.org.uk
Archigram (1961–1974)
A group of architects influenced by avant-garde art movements who playfully challenged assumptions about modern architecture. All of their work was presented as proposals, through drawings and collage. A very different approach to representing and visualising architecture through drawing.
Illustration web Architecture Section
The Royal Institute of British Architecture (RIBA)
Has a series of online workshops, videos and other resources exploring architectural history, drawing and design. Useful to gain a broader perspective on architectural ideas.
www.architecture.com
Michael Blower archive
Examples of British architect Michael Blower’s sketchbooks are available via the website:
http://www.vads.ac.uk
Photorealistic 3D and CGI imaging
Top of the list of Google Search for Architectural Illustration are companies doing photorealistic 3D and CGI imaging, some with animation. This is a very specialised field requiring a high level of 3D Digital skill – not something I could aspire to.
Graphite/ink/charcoal
Michael Vaughan
Watercolour/ink and wash/acrylic
Some of this merges into street/travel illustration.
Philip Bannister
John Walsom
He sets up perspective views on a drawing board in the traditional way and uses a range of stencils for ellipses and curves, working with pencils, brushes and paint. His watercolour images are usually more detailed and accurate than his acrylic paintings. He spends more time doing the drawing than the painting. He also paints in oils en plein air – he likes to work fast with the changing light.
Mixed media
Lucia Emanuela Curzi
Lucia often brings together lots of photographic references and creates a preliminary collage as well as doing some sketches. Her actual illustrations are created on paper using ink, watercolour, pastels, pens or acrylic – though not necessarily all together. However she does use Photoshop to tweak and perfect a piece. Also fashion.
Digital
Fujio Yoshida
Mike Hall
Clean with some Photorealism. Hand-drawn imagery and coloured digitally. Sometimes he combines drawn print designs with digital elements to build up an image. Sometimes, he’ll also draw his map designs using vector graphics.
Cliff Mills
more stylised influenced by Pop Art. Drawn with pen and ink then scanned and coloured in Photoshop.
Juliet Percival
She works from a graphite or pen drawing, sometimes with a subtle watercolour background. This is scanned in and coloured digitally using Photoshop’s brushes or flat colours.
Decue Wu
Uses different compositions, and bold colors in a limited palette, often creating patterns. Most of her work is done using Photoshop and Illustrator, but she also combines hand-made textures, screenprinting and collage work. Also does Fashion.
Thilo Rothaker
3D Sculpture
Tobias Wustefeld
Tobias creates little worlds in bringing together digital and traditional techniques. He draws designs by hand and finishes them in 3D with the computer.
Alex Hogrefe
Interesting Tutorial on using SketchUp
Andre Chiote
Urban sketching: people
For basic figure drawing see: Figure Sketching
Stylisation
I realily like the very basic stylised figures here. An architectural illustrator.
This is a very basic stylised video, showing use of eyeline and basic principles of capturing people in a scene. I like the variation between ink outline, then others started in wash.
Teoh’s tips for sketching people on location – contour drawing and don’t keep moving your head up and down.
This one is just inking in already drawn people. But I like the style.
Realitime videos by Meridel L. Abrams following of how she copes with the various challenges of sketching on location.The first is very rapid sketching of shoppers in a parking lot. The second more stationary outside a restaurant. Both done from a car.
Urban sketching: watercolour
Teo Yi Chie
based in Singapore
Watercolour pencils
Urban sketching: approaches and materials
Urban sketchers website
Steps
Materials
Sketchbooks
Techniques
L S Lowry
source Wikipedia and Google images
Laurence Stephen Lowry (1 November 1887 – 23 February 1976) is famous for painting scenes of life in the industrial districts of North West England in the mid-20th century. Many of his drawings and paintings depict Pendlebury, Lancashire, where he lived and worked for more than 40 years, and also Salford and its surrounding areas.
He developed a distinctive style of painting urban landscapes peopled with human figures often referred to as “matchstick men”. He painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits and the unpublished “marionette” works, which were only found after his death.
