LJL FVL - 1

Introduction

Fundamentals of visual language was all about putting our thoughts and vision onto paper. The entire two weeks were about teaching us the fundamentals of drawing by limiting us to only use dots and lines to communicate our idea.

Working with different mediums

This was the part I was excited about the most of I was very bored of using the same old pencil and micro tips pens for any of the work that I did. So thanks to FVL, I got to experiment with different mediums that I've never had tried before.

Charcoal sticks

I've never had tried Charcoal sticks before FVL, But when I was buying the stationary, the thing I gravitated to the most was the charcoal sticks because they have a completely different look and feel when compared to a normal pencil. A Pencil is usually very sleek and long, and you can also sharpen your pencil to have a sharp look on your drawings, but you can't really do that with charcoal sticks. Charcoal sticks have a very rough and messy feel to them which I personally prefer. On the first day of FVL, during the coffee break, I opened up the packet of charcoal sticks and started messing around with it. (please don't tell Kishor, and Josh sir about this)

Ink

Initially, I thought I was going to hate ink because I'm not very good with the brush. But when I actually started using it, I realized how versatile it is. You can either go for precise work with a thinner brush, or you can go crazy and smash your brush onto the paper with a broader brush or even a thinner brush (if you don't care if it gets ruined) to create a very chaotic looking illustration.

Thematic representation

Confusion

For this, We had to create confusion with square dots, which was honestly some of my better works in this project; We had to create the illustration by using bigger sized square dots, which was new because before this we were making small illustrations, But for the thematic expression of confusion we had to use the entire page which was new. I used square dots of varying sizes to make the illustration messy and confusing I also shaded some of the parts and left some of the parts unshaded to further creating a sense of confusion.

Rain

This was very confusing to me because I couldn't really think of anything related to rain to represent because whenever it rained, I usually just stay inside. I don't really have a relation with rain. when I was trying to create this illustration, I must've sat for so long just thinking about what to make. which now looking back to it, I shouldn't have done because I wasted so much time on thinking instead of creating something.

Daily Drawing Document

The DDD for the entire day was bad because the 10b pencil I was using got very small because of me sharpening it too much. also, the angle I was using was very hard to create in just two minutes.

This is my favorite DDD work because I think it represents the shoe that I'm drawing accurately. I was able to create this before the timer started ringing. I was able to complete this in around 1:30 minutes, which might be because of the footwear I used, Also it has simpler shapes compared to the other one, so it was easier to draw.

Conclusion

Muddiest and clearest points

The muddiest point for me was definitely DDD because I couldn't fathom how was I supposed to create so many drawings of shoes and chappals. Also because of travel it became really hard to keep up with the DDD.

The clearest point for me was working on swatches and gradations because, by that time, I was somewhat confident

in my ink and brush skills. and it was very fun to just go crazy and stop caring about how your swatches looked and just experiment and have fun.

Key Learnings

• Practice practice practice this was basically the entirety of DDD. This project taught me that it's never enough, and you can always keep on improving. As Kishor sir always used to say "dil maange more"

• I also learned to break down various concepts and objects into simpler dots and shapes. which was hard at first, but it got easier through practice.

For my future FVL classes, I'm very excited to try out all of the new colored mediums that we have. I want to know how each one of them works, and how they feel, and what kind of texture do they have; these are the things I'm very excited about.