Developing continuous line style II

I keep practising drawing new designs often but there are some drawings that end up being something that I don't even like. Instead of throwing them away, I think it's good to look at them and think about why aren't they successful and what I can do to make them better.

This post is about what I've learnt from drawing them.

This piece didnt work because of the outer border. It throws it off and looks unfitting. 

The designs lead the eye to the middle because of the spiral shape.Therefore, when the "hole" becomes misplaced, it becomes very obvious to the viewer of the mistake. I need to put the hole at the end instead of planning to put it in the center before I draw the spiral.

Developing a continuous line style

By building upon what I had done with my initial line drawings in the blog post: continuous line drawings of Beatles Songs I plan to develop this further by concentrating on line and the quality of line.

Below is a image of one of many drawings I did with a brush pen. They look quite messy and the line is a bit all over the place. 

After doing many of these, I decided to move onto finer line and what I can do to make it look like a pattern whilst maintaining a continuous line throughout. This is a drawing of the Beatles song: Getting Better. 

At the moment my style is freehand, I'm not worried about making it perfectly circular. I think the looseness of it will help express the flow of music better.

Investigating vinyl and considering the appropriateness of continuous line

So I bought my own Vinyl from Fopp the other day of Hot Chips "Why Make Sense" and I was quite excited about opening it. It even had a free mp3 download code so I can collect the physical Vinyl and listen to it (without buying a Vinyl player)

I took some pictures. Due to the size of it, it felt tactile and that I really own something whereas if I just downloaded it from Itunes, it would just be something that's on your computer that you easily forget about.

I was interested in looking at the grooves in the vinyl. I know we take it for granted, but in a way it's like magic how these indentations on this surface can actually produce music that's a feast for the ears. I wonder how the grooves translate into different sounds. 

Another thing I realised were there were some more solid grooves that divide the smaller grooves into "sets". 

Figurative to Abstraction ?

So I have two approaches, drawing with continuous line or using pictorial representation. Pictorial is more about illustrating the lyrics and telling a story with them. On the other hand, the more abstract approach is continuous line which is about translating what the sound would look like by altering the quality of line. For example, loopy lines? jagged lines? pointy lines? big lines? small lines? 

I think continuous lines work better because they capture the essence of music more effectively. The continuous line represents the grooves that go round and round indefinitely.  The same set of lines are echoed throughout the drawing each time the same beat is repeated in the song. But at the same time as the song reaches different interludes, intros' and outros, its like a energy that is constantly changing. 

Adding texture to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

I tried experimenting with mark making and using it to shade each section. I wanted to see if it worked like tone instead of using colour.

I made the background black (like it would in a relief print) to contrast it against the white space. Close up there is variation in the marks but loking at it from a distance, it doesn't seem to work very well at all.

It's not a very good fit, so I think I'l try experiment with something else. 

Pictorial Designs of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

Following my last post, I thought I try applying colour to Lucy in the sky with Diamonds building upon my previous design shown in Pictorial sketches of Beatles Songs

The darker colours seem to not work as well as Good Morning, the lines get a bit lost. 

Pictorial Designs of "Good Morning"

These series of sketches depict Good Morning as a pictorial Vinyl design. Elements that make up this are loopy lines, dashed lines, curved lines, wavy lines as well as cartoon suns, clouds, stick figures, birds etc. It kind of resembles something you'll find on a plate or something...

After this I questioned "Does this need to be symmetrical?". It doesn't have to be. So I tried doing the same design asymmetrically. It looks like a narrative, like a little story is being told about someone's morning.  

Adding Colour

Continuous line drawings of Beatles songs

In this approach I use continuous line to describe what the each of the Beatles tracks would look like. It is like a stream of consciousness in a way. The quality of line changes to how the track gets louder or quieter, or to the rhythm/pace of it.

In fixing a hole, the line looks warped because I felt the song sounded psychedelic and hypnotic. However, this could have been a pre-conception I had about it before I listened to it, therefore this design maybe cliché-d  

Pictorial sketches of Beatles songs

These are the first out of a series of sketches, I'm trying to interpret what Sergant Peppers would look like if it was graphical. I'm translating something that is sound into something that is pictorial. I was listening to each track while I was abstracting them into line / shape/ icons.

I have come across two different ways of working.

Pictorial 

When listening to some of these tracks, certain icons came to mind and I drew what I could see in my minds eye. Some of these are from lyrics,or a geometric shape that represents the mood of the song.

This one is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. I drew diamond shapes as diamonds, for some reason I drew eyes. Not entirely sure why there are leaves and almond shapes though.

For Good Morning, I drew things that fit into the theme of a brand new sunny day. Such as clouds, sunshine, wavy lines and sounds such as barking or a Rooster

This song When I'm Sixy Four which is about growing old with someone special. I actually had quite a lot of fun with this one. I drew kisses and hearts because the song was about a woman. This gave it a certain sense of naivety to it which adds to the charm. 

This one looks quite different from the rest of them. To me, it reminds me of the beach for some reason.

And I will be covering the continuous line sketches in my next post...

Relief Print of Vinyl Design

I've finished my first relief print of my vinyl design, it took so many test runs but got one im happy with now.

This is based on Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts band, each 1/4 represents a visualisation of track 1-4.

I think it's worked out quite well. The inverted black and white color's from the lino make it look like a Vinyl.

I plan to do some more designs by visualising the music as lines (energy essentially) and to develop them. When I come up with a more resolved design I will either Lino cut them or to transfer them onto Screen print.