Hey! So as of the beginning of college, we have been set a new mini task to warm us up to the rest of the college year, so I am glad to announce a new project called Will Draw for Food! Now, I know I have already talked about it before in my writing on David Hockney, but this will be a more of a brief look at what I had an idea from the research, which is girl dinner!
I got this idea from another initial idea I had for the project, which was a charity campaign to make people more interested in donating to charities to help people with eating disorders. I got this idea from people who I have talked to before, and the idea came as naturally as it could. But I did not want to make a doom and gloom project with a bunch of research into something that could make me upset so I wanted to find a unique way to do this idea in a more fun way.
With this inspiration of a charity campaign, I first made a Pinterest board of other people's work when it comes to charities and looking at the ones, I found visually striking to me. I could have done things like analysing why they work and why some do not and apply that to my own, but that is exactly what I am trying not to do.
“Charity Advertisement Pinterest Board” 2023
When looking for inspiration for food-related things in general online, I found a recent trend where people are posting videos about having small snacks and other sorts of food (and not food) to call it “girl dinner.” I understand that it is a joke, but on the other side, it could be the normality of eating less food in general, leading to eating disorders. I would not think anybody would develop one because of an online trend, but I think it would be an interesting concept to make a charity campaign to fight against the normalisation of “girl dinners” as if it were causing people to starve themselves.
I also learnt from others about what they know about girl dinners and what they are. Now, please do not be worried about men not being allowed to do this trend because they can! It is simply the name of the trend, but to sum it up it's what people have as every quick meal if they are not in the mood to make “actual food.” I also asked others like tutors and other staff members what they have had as girl dinners as I was doing research. One talked about how their favourite girl dinner is a cheese board with grapes and crackers, complemented with a glass of wine.
And so, with this added information about this trend, I started my brainstorming. Now, as some of you might know I do tend to forget to make things like mind maps, and visualisation diagrams amongst other important documents to help me with my creative process, but in my defence, I enjoy more of my instant ideas since they're usually the ones that I have the most fun making, and I wasn’t exactly too focused on making a genuinely good project, just one I can turn my brain off and do some simple drawing.
As for this project though, I did just a smaller amount of research based on what I wanted to draw since this project is about food illustration, so I first made a Pinterest board of girl dinners in which I found a couple of quite funny ones, and I have seen girl dinners like these, of things that wouldn’t usually be classed as food but for comedic purposes, they are! So, I saved the few I could find since there were few on Pinterest. I found these visually more exciting than others described to me due to their almost nonsensical foods to put together and make food enough for a day out of it.
“Girl Dinner Pinterest Board” 2023
Now although the collection may be small, I also looked on Google for images of “Girl Dinner Meme” which is where I found my favourite one which is on some sort of website about said girl dinners which I then found on Twitter. Now, these other girl dinners that I have collected were good I will say but the simplicity of just peanut butter and water was enough to get me interested due to its simplicity too of packaging and water bottle.
For this piece though, I didn’t think the research I did about David Hockney suited the kind of look I was going for here, although the inspiration of drawing packaging abstractly did inspire the way I made my illustration, through a way of drawing I have been working on since I left college for my break, which focused more on the colours rather than the shape itself which I think is very fun to draw and make with minimum brain thinking, and more unconscious creativity. So, to help me. with this, I also made an exceedingly small Pinterest board on what type of sketching I would want to try
“Boat Drawing & Sketching Pinterest Board” 2023
As I was making this Pinterest board, everything clicked on what I wanted to do. As I have said I wanted to make a fake campaign against people having girl dinners, so I would do illustrations of these said girl meals in an unsure and rushed way, like these struggling people made them themselves with the caption “nobody should survive on this” or the equivalent. I loved the idea and it instantly stuck in my head for the rest of this piece.
I will make another blog post about the art I have been making but that will be in the future, but anyways, back to the topic at hand. I was inspired by these pictures to draw in a sketchy style because, like the joke, there is a lot less detail, like there is less food and nutrients people should be having in this universe, along with being a style I have been practising, so I decided to use this peanut butter jar as a reference and begin drawing in only pen.
I first drew this into a piece of paper due to being able to use one of my favourite fine liners, which has a very pleasant and unsure look when used correctly. I have tried to find others that work similarly but they are all ball points, whilst this one is another that I do not exactly know the name of. To digress though, I only used my sight and this single pen to make this sketch as a starting point.
I am really happy with how this came out, for its almost worried and stressed look is what I'm looking for in this, and instead of drawing the water bottle like there is in the image, I put my twist on things with inspiration from another girl dinner meme, which is to replace the water with those small paper cups of tomatoey sauce that you find in restaurants like McDonald's and equivalents. With this sketch now done and done with my satisfaction, I then scanned it into my scanner to use it as a digital graphic instead.
“Peanut Butter Sketch in Book” 2023
After this though, I began doing my usual digital shenanigans. Now, I have done no documentation in what I have done here, and I can only apologise, it was one of my first projects and I wanted something simple and fun to sink my teeth into before getting my head into the game and making proper projects, so do take my word for this. When digitally importing it, I had some trouble with the black and white levels, so I used the levels tool to make sure my black lines were clear but not pixelated, and my greys were majorly gone. After this, I put a simple paper texture for the background, added the text at the bottom as the main quote, applied a grain filter
to the paper texture, used the ripple effect on the text along with a clipping mask for a black and white texture to make it look like it's been drawn on, and finally, it came to the colouring.
I brushed passed everything else because I do not think it is as interesting nor as important at the shading and colouring of this piece since I did a decent job on such. I first went over it with a simple regular colour that I would use, like a regular flat colour of a cheap commission from an artist on Twitter using a graphite brush that I modified for it to have bigger spacing, less flow and less opacity, meaning when colouring and shading it does not automatically place the full colour down. After the main colours, I went in with darker versions of the respected colours to start basic shading like the lid of the peanut butter to the bottom of the jar. Then to top it all off I used a paint splatter tool on low opacity to create shadows on the ground and the general wispiness of the lines that got lost in the editing process of putting the drawing in. You will also see a logo on the bottom right that says “Dinner,” and that is another project I have done that I will touch on another blog post. Enough dilly-dallying though, here is my piece!
“Girl Dinner Advertisement Sketch & Final” 2023
And finally, my piece! This is one I am truly proud of, doe its simple delivery yet effective message on crude and heavily stylized illustrations with great execution. I think for the job this serves it looks amazing I might get this as a poster to put on my wall because I just find it very silly. I would do a couple of things differently though, I would have done more research, well fake research since this is a hypothetical poster, by showing simple statistics of eating disorders, along with looking at why other advertising campaigns work, and getting other people's reactions on the work to see if it did what I wanted it to do which is conveying a certain message. I would also absolutely love to carry on this series if I had the time, to make a line of drawings with this same style and being putting them up in unusual places and such.
Would I revisit this realistically though? Sadly probably not, since I always look to find something new and impressive to create rather than doing the same thing over and over, although I would probably take notes like the “Dinner” Brand from this (in which I have) or this illustration style (in which I do not know yet) But overall, this is an amazing piece that I am so proud of.
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