The intensive course at the BHSAD prompted me again to create a post for illustrators who are "stuck" in their technique and want to expand it (because I am the same). We are free to go wherever we want visually. It all depends on how much inner artist our illustrator has.
Are we ready to ruthlessly abandon our favorite technique for the task? How brave are we to use our untested patterns of interaction with the world (in this case, other visual languages)? On this course, I decided not to bother too much with ideas (in my opinion, their quality depends more on the development of the worldview), but to pay more attention to the process of their implementation.
I am one of those who chase after the beauty of the picture in the first place, using proven methods and losing more expressive ways of conveying ideas along the way. A run-in technique needs to be somewhat devalued in order for it to become equal to a million others. Then a huge choice of methods opens up and another trump card appears in solving the problem, and not only at the level of choosing objects for the plot. With this approach, we will not lose ourselves, because we will still choose our range of topics (choice without choice). Therefore, it is worth influencing those parts of the process that are available to us. This is all "going out of the comfort zone" and in fact it is worth evaluating how much it is necessary each time. When we follow the path of least resistance in an effort to make quickly and beautifully in personal projects, we become hostage to one word in the whole pictorial language. It is worth checking whether our medium corresponds exactly to the idea and what connotation it carries in the context of this message.
In order to prioritize "how" and not "what" when creating series for the course, I made a table with the following columns: task, artists who coped with it, their methods (technique, composition, mood, scale) and how it can be used taking into account their skills (mental and technical). When entering someone else's territory, creating a map of the area, pushes to create a route and move along it. For example, I understand that drawing for the article of the tear-off calendar "Autumn tasks of the gardener", I can get a very beautiful 3D render of metamorphosis from people to plants. But I decided to choose the style of the textbook in order to reinforce the absurdity and a reference to the totalitarian nature of the old learning systems - the idea will then be read subconsciously and immediately, and not after a long deciphering of the relationship between objects.
