wonder and wind
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the wonder that we hide away
I was very excited when I got to read this brief. It’s centring something that I hold very dear to my heart. My favourite thing about being alive is being able to breathe the air and take time to look and love the things around me. It’s something I never want to take for granted. This brief gave me an outlet to focus on these kinds of feelings of appreciation, and mundanity was especially important to me.
However, my enthusiasm for the task made it hard for me to pick just one thing. There are so many things that I love and cherish, and that I would love to be able to immortalise in an image.
I made a list of the subjects that I would like to look into, and tried narrowing it down to subjects that I thought would be interesting to explore. In particular, these stood out to me:
> wind
> smoke
> mixing things together
> looking at colours
I really love the wind, it’s something I always notice when I’m outside. The brush of wind against your shoulders is so beautiful. The feeling of it wrapping around you is almost comforting sometimes. I love cutting my hair short and really feeling the wind in my hair, but also how it flaps around all over my face when it’s longer. However, its intangibility and lack of image make it hard to portray as a single “object”. It’s seen through other things instead of itself.
Smoke is a similar thing, I love the way it curls and drifts and spreads out wherever it wants to. And although the smoke I see most regularly is that of a cigarette, the smoke from the side of someone’s house is also beautiful. It shows that there is life. And so too is the smoke that is the residue of fireworks. It’s a wonderful afterimage. For mixing things together, it’s more of the tactile motion. the feeling of getting your fingers into something. moving paint around on paper. smudging a line. blurring things and shifting them. stirring a pot on the hob. watching things melt together. It’s definitely something we take for granted.
The last bullet point of “colours” is much harder to put into an image. I think it came from the want to make someone appreciate the world around them more. looking at all the colours in our daily lives and really seeing them. noticing the shade of green of the leaves, the amalgamation of gritty colours in gravel under your feet. Getting someone to be able to notice these kinds of things through image might be a real challenge though.
not that the rest of these ideas aren’t already hard.
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air and space – gaston bachelard
i looked in the library for more inspiration. in particular, i read a chapter from Roch C. Smith’s interpretation of gaston bachelard’s “air and space”. it was eye opening. the left hand page contains my initial notation of the ideas mentioned that resonated with me in particular.
it talks a lot about intangibility and the human mind’s interpretation of objects and ideas.
> one is never sure of finding it, or of finding it solid, when someone approaches a centre of being
> our “sight says too many things at one time”
Alongside this, I’m attaching a specific passage that I liked. he mentions how when we think of “air”, there is no immediate image that comes to mind, unlike his example of water, which has countless images to base itself on in our heads. Because of this lack of ontology, we allow ourselves to create our own image of it in our heads alone, and therefore, we all create different interpretations of it in our minds.
It’s all different from person to person, and as such, there is a clear dynamism in our interpretations. The line “allow the inner reality to be known” was really potent to me. Because I really would like to let my interpretations of these things be known.
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narrowing the field
Reading the Bachelard chapter really pushed me into the route of “wind”.
Thinking about it more, it really did kind of cover the other ideas I wanted to explore anyway. Smoke is inseparable from wind; it relies on it to be dispersed. Wind mixes things together and throws things astray. And I thought that, even though wind is “colourless”, I could emphasise its lack of colour and focus on the things it flows through, especially in nature
THE PROBLEM WITH THIS IS THAT MY FEAR OF TACKLING SOMETHING SO INTANGIBLE IS BROUGHT TO THE FOREFRONT.
SIMPLY PUT, IT’S JUST HARD TO DRAW WIND. HOW DO OTHER PEOPLE PERCEIVE IT? HOW I PRESENT WIND WILL LOOK NOTHING LIKE IT TO SOMEONE ELSE.
I DECIDED TO START OFF BY LISTING MATERIALS THAT COULD LEND THEMSELVES TO THE CONCEPT AND DECIDED TO TEST IT OUT.
FIRST, I JUST STARTED DRAWING WHAT I THOUGHT “WIND” WOULD LOOK LIKE VISUALLY IN ITS PUREST FORM. “WIND” IS DEPICTED ON WEATHER MAPS AS CURLED LINES
The curl of wind in a map is pretty distinct. it swirls from multiple directions and converges into one.
This kind of imagery was what i was picturing when drawing this initial concept WITH GRAPHITE, PASTEL PENCIL AND CHALK. Underneath, I noted the other kind of things i had in my head while i was drawing.
There is a lot of variation in my ideas of an “icon” for wind. It varies. Wind does not lend itself to binary black and white easily at all. IT’S EASILY RECOGNISABLE BUT NOT EXTENDABLE. I DIDN’T THINK THAT DECIDING ON ONE CURL SHAPE WOULD WORK IN CONCEPTUALISING WIND ANYWAY. I’M GOING FOR A MORE “FEELINGS-BASED” DEPICTION THAN ANY STRICT GUIDELINES.
AFTER THIS, I WENT STRAIGHT INTO GETTING MY INITIAL IDEAS OF “WIND” DOWN.
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the mundanity of wind
> I AM DRAWN TO THE WIND BECAUSE I LOVE THE FEELING OF IT ON MY SKIN
TRYING TO SHOW MY APPRECIATION FOR SOMETHING SO INTANGIBLE IS HARD. IT’S A MASSIVE HURDLE, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S SOMETHING THAT I CARE ABOUT SO MUCH ALREADY. I HAVE A SPECIFIC FEELING THAT I WANT TO CONVEY IN THE IMAGES I MAKE IN TRIBUTE TO IT.
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PUSH ALL THOSE FEELINGS INTO AN IMAGE, WHILE ALSO BALANCING DEPICTING WIND SUFFICIENTLY ENOUGH THAT IT’S VISIBLE THAT IT’S CLEAR LOVE LETTER TO IT?
WHEN I DREW THE GIRL AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LEFT PAGE, I was instantly reminded of one of my favourite illustrators, MinaHAMU.
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MinaHAMU
minahamu has been one of my longtime inspirations. they use acrylic and oil paints or digital software to illustrate their works. the atmospheric feel to their pieces is so piercing to me. it feels so familiar. and wind is often “seen” in their pieces.
they mainly use flat colours to build up their scenery. one of my main pitfalls has always been full illustrated backgrounds. minahamu is especially good at this while using minimal detail. when you look closely, you can see that they block in their shapes and rely more on the tone and shape to convey rather than having a clean rendered look to their work. Because of this, everything comes out a lot more raw. It’s really inspiring to me.
although i love this style of working, i know it is incompatible with my workflow.
i find it hard to leave a piece alone, and often find myself touching up details and rendering all my forms heavily. i know that i would never be able to leave a shape alone by itself once i draw it. i do try to use the layering technique that MINAHAMU useS sometimes, but i can’t just leave it AS FLAT SHAPES.
the things i was drawing really reminded me of just sitting in the wild fields back home in the stoke poges commons. feeling completely isolated while the wind flows around you and all the life in the area. the wind whipping your clothes around and getting to lose yourself in it.
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my windy photos
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WIND IN THE CLOUDS
From these, i decided to go sit out in the wind and do some thumbnails. although i really liked the second one of the shoreline wind, i loved the sense of freedom that i was getting from the bottom left thumbnail. the girl also looked like she belonged to the scene.
i decided to take this forward and just stick it into procreate and see where i was able to take it. i knew that i wanted to preserve the feeling of freedom and floatiness that i got from the concept, so i decided to make it as soft and painterly as i could.
first, i traced over the scan and made adjustments as i deemed necessary.
then, i altered one of my pencil brushes to be more “scattered” in pattern to create this sort of “soft blur” effect.
Although i liked it, it really wasn’t the kind of image i was aiming for, so i decided to just focus on rendering the clouds first.
BELOW IS A FULL TIMELAPSE OF THE PIECE
SOMETHING THAT I THINK IS WORTH MENTIONING IS THIS POINT IN THE PROCESS WHERE I DECIDED TO CHANGE THE HAIR FROM BEING SEPARATE TO PART OF THE CLOUDS.
I REALLY WANTED TO EMPHASISE THE IDEA OF FLOATING UP IN THE SKY AND BEING ONE WITH THE IMAGERY THAT THE SKY PROVIDES. THERE IS NO “IMAGE” OF WIND, BUT WE ALL STILL LOOK UP WHEN WE WANT TO SEE THE WEATHER. Despite this, WE STILL CAN’T SEE THE WIND. I THINK IT IS THIS THAT MADE ME THINK OF MELDING THE TWO SUBJECTS TOGETHER TO HELP CREATE THE KIND OF “HIGH UP WINDY SKY” FEEL THAT I WAS AIMING FOR.
BELOW IS THE FULL FINAL PIECE:
I’M REALLY HAPPY WITH THE KIND OF FLOATY FREEDOM FEELING THAT I WAS TRYING TO EMULATE WITH THIS IMAGE. THE ACTUAL BRUSHSTROKES ARE SOFT AND CALMING, AND THE WAY THE COLOURS MIX TOGETHER TOOK INSANELY LONG, BUT I REALLY LIKE THE OUTCOME.
TO ME, I FEEL THE SENSE OF WIND, BUT I AM NOT SURE IF IT’S APPARENT TO OTHERS. I REALISED AFTER MAKING THE PIECE THAT CLOUDS DON’T REALLY SHOW THEMSELVES BEING AFFECTED BY WIND OTHER THAN THEIR MOVEMENT, WHICH IS HARD TO CONVEY IN A STATIC IMAGE. BECAUSE OF THIS, THE ONLY ELEMENTS THAT /REALLY/ CONVEY WIND IN THIS IMAGE ARE THE FLOW OF THE CLOTHING AND THE HAIR, SOMEWHAT. It’s a shame because the original sketch really had that feel of wind to it, AND I MANAGED TO COMPLETELY ERASE IT.
I THINK IT WAS ERASED WHEN I MERGED THE HAIR TO THE BACKGROUND, BUT I CAN’T FIND IT IN MYSELF TO REGRET IT. I LIKE HOW IT LOOKS AND FEELS. AND EVEN IF IT DOESN’T SCREAM “WIND”, I FEEL THE SAME FEELINGS THAT I FELT IN THAT VIDEO OF ME IN FRANCE ABOVE WHEN I IMAGINE MYSELF IN THE IMAGE. OF COURSE IT WILL BE COLD AND CRISP AND MELLOW AND AIRY.
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dyeing the wind
immediately after this, i wanted to try using ink to make something more focused on shape and brustrokes to convey wind.
I used watercolour paper and three different acrylic inks to try this out, as well as brushes and some sponges.
the problem that i encountered, is that i kept overworking the image. i continually wasn’t happy with where the image was going so i kept adding layers of ink over and over and over. the next image was when i was around 3/4 through the process and realised how deep i had sunk in the creation process and how much it was stunting everything.
i really wasn’t happy with it at this point, but i kept adding more and more ink to it.
i kept chasing the idea of wind until i absolutely destroyed it in this image. the final image came out more “water” and “sea” -like than wind at all. The earlier iterations of the image were way way way more successful in conveying wind than the final image that i came to.
the final image is so disapointing to me. i quickly moved on from it. it really didn’t do what i wanted it to, and the 3/4 process picture is way more reminiscent of wind than any aspect of the final image.
i realised that ink, especially acrylic ink, was not the medium for this. it’s too permanent and although i love the medium a lot, i really couldn’t get it to work in the way i wanted it do, especially in this sort of monochrome full illustration way.
some of the patterns in the “hair” are somewhat reminicent of the sky when you focus in on them, and i do like that a lot. it’s just that altogether the image is very heavily lacking.
i moved on from this quickly and went back to my initial thumbnails to try to reset.
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hearing the WIND
i decided to try adapting one of the other thumbnails in a different way. Instead, for this piece I tried to centre the “sound” that the wind carries.
sound is a bit harder to draw. There are obviously the music notations that are easy to draw and add on a surface level, but the thing I had more trouble with was filling the rest of the image in a way that i felt was “relevant” to the feeling.
INITIALLY I STARTED OFF INTENDING TO DO A FULL RENDER, BUT I found that using a gradient map made the whole thing more visually appealing to me. REMOVING ALL OF THE WARM COLOURS MADE IT FEEL MORE COLD, WINDY AND FLOWY TO ME. IT MADE SENSE.
The COUNTLESS LAYERED swirls, patterns AND HALFTONES were especially helpful in conveying the “sound” in the way that I wanted to.
LOOKING BACK, It’s not so much the “sound” THAT I WAS TRYING TO CONVEY, but more the feeling of being able to hear all these things that are around us, and how the sound travels. Obviously, I know that it is sound waves that are actually transmitting these things, but the idea of it all being carried by the wind was really enchanting to me.
The image ended up coming out a bit surface-level and boring in my opinion, visually, but I really like looking at the background and feeling a bit lost in it. THE DEPTH IS THERE, BUT IT’S NOT REALLY EXPANDED ON IN THE IMAGE. I THINK I DEFINITELY COULD’VE PUSHED IT FURTHER, BUT IT’S HARD WITH AN IMAGE LIKE THIS WHERE IT ALREADY HAS SO MANY LAYERS AND PATTERNS TO IT; THERE’S ONLY SO MUCH YOU CAN DO WITHOUT RISKING OVERWORKING THE PIECE.
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FEELING THE WIND
sketching with graphite and watercolour pencil. The first page was more of a warm-up, and I liked the two thumbnails with the blue umbrellas being blown away, but I especially liked the second page.In particular, these two drawings:
the feeling of floating and becoming one with the wind was especially strong for me. i really liked the loss of control that comes with it.
IT WAS A NICE CONTRAST TO THE SORT OF THING I FELT WHEN I LOOKED AT THE “floating, dreaming” IMAGE. i still think i could’ve pushed the flow of the clothing a lot further, but that’s easier to do digitally and not in a one-off traditional drawing with graphite.
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GRANULATING WATERCOLOURS
I RECIEVED A SET OF GANSAI TAMBI GRANULATING WATERCOLOURS THAT I HAD REALLY BEEN WANTING TO TEST OUT.
i tried them out in my hobonichi journal. i did a few swatch tests and realised that the effect that the granulation makes was remincient of the flow of wind to me. because of this, i decided to try to make a small image test with this medium.
when i scanned in the image, it really did not do any of the colours on the page justice. all the warmer tones got erased, so here’s an edited image that I took with my phone instead.
the pink creates this sort of warm diluted fuzzy feeling that i really liked. it somewhat reminds me more of “water” than “wind”, but it made me think of water currents and how those are a kind of wind too in my eyes.
they ebb and flow too like the wind does, in swirling patterns. it sweeps up the subject and holds them in the sea like the wind does on land too.
i also like the openness of the expression. it’s content, like the subject belongs in that environment, which is also how i feel towards wind in the first place. it slotted into place. i had to combine a few of the paints together to create this piece but i like the way everything interacted
i then did another batch, with the “ebb and flow” of water currents as my focus instead.
i found out that my scanner does not pick up neon pigments, which is why the paints look so different in comparison to real life.
heres the pictures of the illustrations:
the first image was a test, before i realised that i really needed watercolour paper to work with these paints properly.
i really like the finished images, but i found it to be a shame that i wasn’t able to scan them in, especially because watercolour paper tends to furl up when it’s wet, and even more so in thin strips of the paper like these.