Amelia Stevens Portfolio

This is my portfolio showcasing art I have created during my art foundation course, independently, and through other projects.

Animation

One factor all of the following animations have in common is that each one is constructed with a narrative in mind. Some may be more explicit than others, spelling out a story clearly, whereas I chose to leave others up to the interpretation of the viewer, letting them decide what's happening, the only exception to this being the final film.

This is a simple short example of movement, an animation of a selkie removing her skin to gaze up at the sky. I focused largely on the movement of the selkie, paying attention to how the skin crumples and moves, and how the girl emerges out from under it, how her hands lift and clutch at the skin.

As well as this however, I also payed attention to the aesthetic of the scene, such as how the lighting and sky create the impression of an overcast day.

This film once again features selkies, but this time with much more of a narrative in mind. The main focus of the film is the same selkie as the previous film, but this film establishes her as a character, as well as her relationship to her skin, her friends and the ocean.

I created this animation to get a better feel of the character by portraying a simple narrative, her opening a chest to gather her seal skin and make her way to the ocean, to be joined by other selkies who the viewer can infer that she knows by how affectionately they greet one another, who then enter the ocean together, donning their skins and becoming seals. 

This animation is once again short and focused on the movement more than the narrative, but carries over elements from the previous film, such as there being three selkies, now seals, all swimming together in the ocean.

While I chose to focus on the movement of this animation, thinking about how the seals swim in curves, and how their bodies and tails stretch as they move, this, as well as the context of the previous film, unintentionally created a closeness between the characters, resulted in them coming across as friends swimming together.

The grid above shows the process of the seals swimming. Each seal follows a line, its' body, fins and tail curving to match the path and the momentum of the movement. One seal even swims in a loop, arching round the other as it swims, but still falling the line and curving its' body to match the momentum of the movement.

I created this simple animation as an exercise in setting and character establishment. I utilised the pose and movement of the two characters to establish their personalities. The girl sits cross legged, using both hands to lift her drink, alluding to that she's young, but also comfortable where she is. The person sitting next to her wears slightly more formal clothes, and has a calm expression, and delicately stirs the drink with one hand, suggesting an elegant manner.

In regards to the setting, both characters are wearing coats, the younger in a scarf, the background is grey and overcast, suggesting a colder temperature, as well as the cables blowing in the wind in the wider shot, and the sound of wind in the background.

"Don't walk alone at night," came about as a result of a project set over the course of my foundation year which gave the prompt word "survival" I chose to focus on the topic of how women are persecuted and threatened in their daily lives, and chose to do this by contrasting the advice women are given to modify their behaviour to avoid being abused, versus the victim blaming accusations they face if they are attacked. 

I chose to separate the advice and accusations by both the colour and style of the text, writing out the advice in black using the cursive brush, presenting it almost in a harmless fashion, as if it were just well meaning advice, and writing the accusations in red, in a rough harsh fashion, doing nothing to disguise the intentions of these quotes.

However, as the film goes on, the advice growing bigger and more rough, taking on either a more angry or more desperate tone as it switches to the accusations that also grow bigger and bigger. The film picks up speed as it goes on, switching between the advice and accusations faster and faster, lingering on the final piece "JUST SAY NO," before it goes white, still and silent. Then, a single hand reaches up and writes out the words "I did," demonstrating the sheer futility of it all.

Looping animation

I created looping animation not just as an experiment with simple animation cycles, but as exercises in character design, setting and visual storytelling.

With this particular animation I quite like the element of visual storytelling, from how the two girls are sleeping on a train at night, carrying backpacks, indicating that they've been travelling, and the close proximity and possible trust that exists between them as one sleeps while the other stays awake, sitting close to them. The loop raises questions about the characters, encouraging viewers to come up with their own answers and form their own narrative.

With this animation, as well as the lift and the movement of the character, I also had to figure out how the lantern could shine onto the buildings and the character but not the sky behind it, giving the impression that the sky in-between the buildings is flat, rather than open space.

The goal with this particular loop was to improve on crowd drawing, setting this loop in an environment like a subway, where you'd be likely to find people in crowds and in close proximity to one another, allowing me to draw many different people occupying a single space, some higher up, some more towards the base of the frame.

I payed particular attention to the design of the characters making sure they looked visually distinct from one another yet didn't clash and created a harmonious image.

This grid shows process images from each stage of the looping animation, showing how I develop the shot. When it comes to the stationary elements I treat it much like I would my regular process, sketching out the placement, outlining the proportions and poses then moving on to the more detailed line art. However, once that's done, I treat the drawing a little differently, colouring in the flat colours, but instead of fine tuning and shading them, I then move on to the background and in this case, the moving component, drawing, colouring and adding lighting to the subway walls moving past, then adding the final touches, the lighting, painting on green and brown tones and setting them appropriately, then adding highlights to compliment the background lighting.

I created this loop when experimenting with sound affects and audio, as well as animating multiple moving components in a single loop. The fire in the hearth, the lighting and the rain in the window all needed to be animated together, so for my first attempt I animated the rain in ten frames, and while this made the rain look very smooth, I found it made the fire and lighting look completely off, the fire and lighting being five and three frames respectively, I then shortened the rain loop, making it five frames instead of ten, allowing everything to move in a more harmonious rhythm.

As well as this, I payed attention to the aesthetic of this loop, choosing the colour scheme carefully, adding low lighting and the clap of thunder and rain to create a more defined ambience.

Digital art

I create digital art in much the same way as my animations, inspired by stories, other artists and personal experiences, and often with a story in mind, such as the names and experiences of the people I draw.

The digital art being paintings, single images, rather than animation, means I can render much more detail, such as more dynamic lighting, clearer texture and more in depth shading.

I'm very proud of this piece, I feel that I was successfully able to portray some emotion through a family bond. I chose a simple colour scheme of muted blues and warm oranges which I felt was very effective, giving the picture an aesthetically pleasing look, but keeping the warmth I wanted to portray. The goal for this piece was to portray different stages of life through a daughter, a mother and a grandmother, paying attention to the clothes they wear, how they look similar to one another, how they look different, and especially, how the age shows in each of them, paying attention to how the mother has greying hairs and an older face, and how the grandmother has looser clothing and age lines. 

One element of this picture I particularly like is the way it's left up to viewer interpretation. Perhaps the painting has a deeper meaning of female oppression, and how no matter what you try you end up trapped in the same place with no way to leave, or perhaps it is simply a candle flame, saddened as she's burnt all the wicks and candles around her, leaving her trapped in her lamp.

The purpose of this image was a learning exercise in which I tried to express a character through character design, facial expression, pose and body language. I found the key to good character design is being able to simply look at a character and immediately know about them. From this drawing you can gather that this is a roller skater, perhaps tough, although nonchalant, as if she doesn't much care what's going on around her.

This picture helped to develop my techniques in background and lighting elements, helping to enhance the general ambience of this picture. I found backgrounds particularly difficult, often able to create well drawn figures and designs, but unable to position them in a frame, making them look lost in the space. In this picture, I was able to use the sunflowers to fill more space within the frame, establish a setting, and help the central character to look more natural inhabiting the space. As well as this, I felt that the lighting was able to add a layer of ambience to the picture, painting in shadows in the same way I usually do, painting warm brown tones onto the picture, then setting the layer to get the appropriate saturation I'm looking for, but instead of painting on a few smaller highlights, I instead set the shadow to reverse selection, and painted yellow light wherever the shadows were not, resulting in a much stronger light.

This picture was inspired by the works of Jackie Morris, and I created this with certain elements of her style in mind. Jackie Morris often paints women, sometimes on beautiful flowing clothing, and accompanied by animals, such as big cats. I chose to depict both elements in my work, drawing a woman in layers of flowing fabrics, accompanied by a snow leopard. Jackie Morris has a certain way of painting furs and textures onto her clothing and animals, using browns and blues and purples to create wispy, tactile effects. I tried to replicate this in my work, using blue and cyan tones to offset the fur trimmings and hood of the central character. 

As well as this, I tried to find a compromise in the face of the snow leopard, wanting it to have an expression and not come across as blank, but not to the point of nearing a hyper stylized, almost cartoonish effect. I eventually settled with an expression that felt somewhere between the two and fit the style of the drawing, resulting overall in a piece that, while it had obvious traits of Jackie Morris, I was also able to incorporate my own style into this picture.

This series shows my drawing process. I start with a very simple and rough sketch purely for the sake of the placement, then move on to the more detailed line work, often done with a smaller pen in order to get finer details. I then rough in the base colours in order to make sure I'm happy with the colour scheme before moving on to shading. The final step is then to add in the main lighting, with heavier shadows and gradients to give the impression of a glowing light source, as well as adding a few final touches to the background in order to complete the picture.

After coming up with the design and setting that is the building above, I came up with the idea of drawing it again from scratch, but instead piece by piece.

These pictures each consist of the building above, but drawn at a larger size and in much more detail, as I drew each section one by one, adding in characters, details and props that weren't in the original, until each picture could be fitted together.

This resulted in the final piece, one of the largest and most detailed drawings I've ever completed. I especially like how each piece can exist by it's own merits, or can be fitted together to result in the final piece.

Some elements I kept consistent, such as the warm yellow lighting in the windows, and others could be found in a single piece, such as the wind chimes and the telescopes. Others start in single pictures, but then spill into others, such as the red ivy. And while each piece has something unique to offer, when combined the individual elements work together to create something greater than the sum of its' parts.

Life drawing

This section largely consists of gesture drawings and life sketches done in my life drawing classes.

This consists of a class mate who I had to draw under a certain time limit, resulting in the picture above. The style looks much rougher and hastier than my usual style, but I felt this was a good thing, as often I can be too controlled and stiff in my artwork, and felt that this was a good chance to loosen up my line.

This gesture drawing was drawn during a life drawing class with a nude model, and really helped my understanding of anatomy as well as posing.

During this session, the model wore a large flamenco dress, and we were given short time frames in which to draw her. I quite liked the result of the model's dress being drawn in this rough, hasty style with a medium such as charcoal, as it gives the impression of the dress, rather than the details being meticulously rendered, which is often my style. This way of drawing pushed me outside of my comfort zone and helped me improve my sketching style.

Automatic drawing

One of the workshops I attended was titled "Automatic drawing," and for twenty minutes or so, we would draw whatever came to mind in a chaotic fashion. I really liked this way of drawing, enjoying my end result, so I continued to draw in this way after the workshop.

This is one of my earlier drawings, sketched in the same chaotic and rough fashion, but as I developed this style, I began using it to construct settings, making sure everything fit together and that no spaces were left too blank or empty.

When I attended a printing class, I chose my automatic drawings as templates for coloured prints, which resulted in these images

This is a screen print, and the subject matter was inspired by a trip to the botanical gardens, where I completed many rough gestures and more detailed drawings of the plants and flowers, but also of the apothecary, which housed many bottles of medicines, pills and the like, which I was greatly inspired by. I chose a simple colour scheme of orange, yellow and green, and painted onto a screen in the rough shapes of the subject matter, then painted outlines and simple, gestural linework over the top, which was then printed from the screen to two pieces of fabric, the first print being the one above, featuring the most vibrant colours, and the exhaustion print having much more muted tones.

Photography

During my foundation year, I took a photography workshop, which first required us to make black and transparent sheets from photocopies of collage we had made, consisting of simple shapes like triangles, circles and rectangles, which allowed us to photograph and develop them onto photography paper.

As well as just using the transparent sheets, we had access to a variety of offcuts, which we could layer on top of one another to create different results.