Part 3: Exercise 1 - You Are What You Eat

 For this exercise I started by researching different proverbs, both English and Korean (because I am currently learning the Korean language but dismissed that idea because I don't understand the language and culture enough and might misinterpret it, so I decided to stick with English) 

I then narrowed it down to proverbs to do with nature because I am trying to work on bringing my personal voice more into my degree work. I am very inspired by nature, animals and cute things so I wanted to bring those together for this exercise.

Martin, G., 2022. A list of phrases about the natural world.. [online] Phrasefinder. Available at: <https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nature-phrases.html> [Accessed 18 May 2022].

Culture Trip. 2022. 12 Proverbs That Will Make You Fall in Love with the Korean Language. [online] Available at: <https://theculturetrip.com/asia/south-korea/articles/12-proverbs-that-will-make-you-fall-in-love-with-the-korean-language/> [Accessed 18 May 2022].

Here is my short list:

@NikiIllustrates  @Merib.art

A friend and I are hosting a Spring Creative Challenge on Instagram and so I wanted to try to          incorporate some of the prompts with the sketches for the proverb. I love drawing flowers and growing them so I was very inspired to focus on a floral theme. So I chose 'April Showers Bring May Flowers'.

Starting to doodle ideas.

I was thinking about what style to do these in, at first I was going to do full illustrations but looking ahead at the rest of part 3, I thought it would be fun to try a simple comic style.

At this point I did a lot of research into the comic styles I enjoy, I was already reading more comics and graphic novels to learn more about it and think about what styles I liked the best. This research was also relevant to the upcoming exercises so I have put it all on a separate post as there was too much to duplicate in each post.

https://nikisillustration2degree.blogspot.com/2022/05/comic-and-graphic-novel-research.html

         Following my discoveries in the above research I decided to play with a simple, comic book style for this proverb. This was a jumping off point to lead into the next exercises, so I didn't spend as long on this one.

I'm actually really pleased with how these turned out and it was fun to try a very simple comic style to see how they turned out. I used my favourite colours and added a kawaii, funny edge to it. Illustrating a proverb wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I was very conflicted at the start as to how much detail to put in and whether to do full illustrations or something simpler. The comic research really helped me narrow down my decision and definitely influenced the end result.

Although I found this exercise difficult, I'd definitely like to try more comic style illustrations and develop my voice in this area.