Hello! For this one, I am going to be looking at one artist called Lucinda Rodgers, a known illustrator in England. We will talk a little about herself, but we will mainly be discussing her relevant work. After this, we’ll be looking at one of her pieces to analyse and understand to help us get some inspiration for the final pieces.
Lucinda Rodgers, born in 1966, is an English illustrator along with artists who are known for her works in newspaper companies like The Times, now defunct Sunday Business and The Independent. Her work is also seen in books by Robert Cowan and Jules Renard. But we are not focusing on those sorts of pieces she has made; we’re going to be looking at her “eye-to-paper work” as I like to call it. What she does in these pieces is going to a place, she us
ually is famous for her London illustrations, finds somewhere to sit and draws exactly what she sees. Most of these eyes-to-paper works are made from very simple materials like ink, crayon and watercolours onto large pieces of paper. These are usually kept to herself from looking on her website, lucindarodgers.co.uk.
That’s enough back story about her public life though let’s look at the piece I want to go through, which is one Souk Semmarine, made in Marrakech in 2013.
So, before I start this, I feel like I could explain how this will go. I will be asking five questions which will hopefully be their paragraphs. These questions will be Who? As in who has made the piece? What? Which is looking at what the piece is physically made up of. When? As in when this was made, and if this impacts how the piece looks, or the topic is. Where? Where the piece was made, and if it affects the piece's topic, style, materials etc. and why? Which is why the artist created the piece. So, let’s get into it!
So, who made this piece? This drawing was made by the aforementioned Lucinda Rodgers during her trip to Marrakesh.
What makes up this picture? This picture looks to be made up of a single white piece of paper and varying brush sizes of ink, or perchance it could be a pen instead due to some of its intricate patterns like the one that’s under the sign in a different language.
When was this piece made? This was made in 2013 and looking at the picture itself it doesn’t look like it has affected the look of the drawing, due to Lucinda’s style of drawing what she sees, but doing a little research into Morocco, the country that holds Marrakesh, I found some interesting things. From the research I have done, 2013 was a lousy year for Morocco, with their government Abdelilah Benkirane tanking foreign investment by sixty per cent, along with a trade deficit and a low GDP their people really put their economy in a slump, which could have been the motivation to create at there, to try and get people more interested into the county of Morocco, or I am overthinking it and she simply just liked the area and wanted to see it for herself.
Where was this piece made? From the last question, I think it is safe to say that this place is made in Marrakesh, Morocco. This has changed her visuals since she draws what she sees, and in this piece, you see flowier lines and the usage of thicker and thinner lines, especially compared to her pieces made in London.
Why did the artist make it? From looking around on her website, this piece was made to promote the resort that’s also in Marrakech called Pentagram, which now explains why she went to Marrakech in the first place, but despite this may be the crisis that Orozco was the reason why Pentagon decided to hire her for her talents.
Who made this? This piece as been illustrated by Lucinda Rodgers for the line work and colouring, although we could also count all of the people in the drawing as people who also made this, but to each their own really.
What mediums are used to create this piece? From looking at her page, she details how she uses a pleforah of mediums for her pieces, and some of them show here, with uses of mediums like water colours. We can tell its water colour due to its varying darkness of the colour, along with the quite organic shape of the brush strokes, like it wasn't supposed to look like that but instead it ended up like that. drawing the main black lines, thick and thin, are done with ink.We can tell due to the brush stroke like texture the thicker lines have, whilst the smaller ones have it to a degree. The other colours, like the blue and the red, I have a leaky suspicion that they are digitally added in, rather than native to the picture. This is because when we can see the red and blue go underneath the black lines, it seems that these black lines have a think stroke of white, which is a common artefact from using colour select with not a high enough colour radius. Which could mean that this entire piece was at one point made physically, but then it was scanned into a digital format by some sort of to be coloured in later, probably using photoshop, since we can see this image is a bitmap, along with the fact you cant turn photos into vectors without major difficulty.
When was this piece made? Luckily, the website that these come from, lucindarogers.co.uk, tells us. This is made in 2021, during United Nations Climate Change Conference of 2021, also known as COP26. This influenced how the image looks due to this protest being all about climate change, so if this was at another time in 2021, they wouldn't be protesting for it. This also influences her own style, since in this era, as we can see, she begins to explore digital forms of colouring, although this could also be a simple fluke from her usual drawings.
Where was this piece made? From looking at the first google search of COP26, we know that this is in Glasgow. This explains why there is a man wearing a Scottish beanie and a sign that seems to be a reference on how Scottish people speak. This could have also influenced how this looks, since their grass might be lighter coloured then lets say the UK has, along with different buildings If we are getting very specific, it looks to be that Lucinda drew this at the back of the protest, since it looks like an awful lot of people are facing the other direction in the background, but I could be wrong I wasn't there. apart from this though I don't think the location of this effected how this looks.
Why did the artist make this selection of drawings? I think this was made more to show awareness of the COP26 along with being a fun little way to document what happened through her prespective. This collection of COP26 drawings include a whole bunch of other drawings, and this is only a small shot of her whole stay.
Who made this picture? Since this doesn't have any sort of prominent people shown in the image, so I could only assume this was made by Lucinda, unless she's had someone else scan this picture into a digital format for her.
What mediums were used in this piece? Well, we can see that this is one that's completely real, so no sort of assistance from digital software, since there isn't any sort of noticeable atrifacts that make it look like it was edited, only ones that make it look more real, like the ink slopes on some of the buildings. The black details and lines are Lucinda's iconic use of ink, and we can tell it's ink because of the inconsistent thickness o the lines, along with the brush stokes that are prominent throughout this piece. everything else that's coloured besides the dark paper used as a background is done with crayons. We know this because its detailed on her website that she likes to use them, along with the texture the coloured lines have, along with how it isn't thick enough to fully cover the paper with its colour, so you can see a bit of a faded look on the parts whee she didn't put more pressure on the crayon. Since this was made physically though, and its front of us now, it has had to been scanned into a digital format using a scanner.
When was this made? Well, this photo has a lot more information compared to the rest of the ones I have looked at, since this is an illustration of a ver restrictive place for its time, so we know that this was made in 2002. This has effected how the piece looks because this Is when Lucinda was only staying with her three main mediums, Ink, Crayons and sometimes Watercolours, compared to 2021 where we saw a slight glimpse of her using other digital mediums. The time of the piece also effected how it looks, since this looks like it was done, we have a darker piece of paper used for the background, but also lighter and brighter crayon used around the place because it was probably really hard to see.
Where was this made? This for me s the most interesting part. This is at Ground Zero, where 9-11 happened in New York. She was given special access to draw what she saw, which is especially impressive since they did not allow any sort of photography in the area, so instead they invited an artist to illustrate it instead. This effect how the illustrations look immensely, with not as much detail compared to other pieces she has made before, since I could only assume she wasn't allowed to be there for very long because of how private Ground Zero was.
Why was this made? Lucinda Rogers answered this herself with the information she gave about this, where she says "Because the physical form of New York was by then so familiar to me I wanted to portray something of what had happened to it. Allowed into these unseen parts of the site I felt an urgency to record extraordinary, passing scenes and the people dedicated to their gruelling task." From this, we can tell that she Made this piece because she simply wanted to document a happening in New York since she was bored of the regular look of New York.
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