Illustration 1: Key steps in illustration- Part 5: Words and pictures-Exercise 4: Text and image
Begin by taking each pair of words in turn from the list below and writing them in your own handwriting:
Big Small
Fat Thin
Fast Slow
Fun Boring
Calm Mad
Now write each pair of opposites in a way that is descriptive – use the shape and size of the word and the relative position of the letters to express the meaning of the word. A fat ‘F’ may look different to a thin ‘F’. Write the words in both upper case and lower case.
Turning to your computer software, scroll through the fonts and select one that suits your word. Reflect the qualities you were seeking to express when hand-drawing the word. Be conscious of the roundness or pointedness of a letter form. Note whether it’s serif or sans serif. It may help to type the word several times in different fonts and make a direct comparison between them.
Print off the words in the typefaces you’ve selected in a size that reflects the meaning of each word. Your ‘fat’ word may be much larger than your ‘thin’ word, for example, and each may be in a different font.
Trace the typeface in pencil using the colour that best communicates its meaning.
Use a moodboard to explore other media qualities which communicate the meaning of your word – consider texture, line quality and colour combinations.
Draw your typed words freehand using a pencil and then render them using materials, media and colour appropriate to their meaning.
I moved onto printing my typefaces out and tracing them, then using colour and texture to represent each word. This included oil pastels, water colours, pens, pencil, chalk.
I began this task by sketching the words in pencil, covering in pen and then scanning them in. I tried to represent each word as best as I could with just lines. Moving onto the digital text part, I again used just black text, changing the typeface, upper and lower case, italics/not and the tracking.
