Illustration Society

 24/10/2025 What The Blob? Zine We were really stumped for ideas what to do with the blobs from the workshop. Actually we had a lot of ideas but didn't think any were very solid, so we decided to do another zine (if in doubt zine it out). We thought that we'd separate the photocopied blobs and the member made A4 blobs, and make a poster and a zine. But the poster ended up turning into stickers which we were WAY happier with.  For the zine we had found a template for a fold zine that could have a pocket in the middle, so we HAD to try that. So we threw it together in photoshop and decided to print it on a slightly thicker cream coloured paper, because the stark white made it look a bit tacky. Then we made bookmarks that we could fit in the zine pocket (yay!), which we made with the idea of it being a 'fill in your own blobs' kind of thing. We also recycled the pattern we'd made for the colouring book zine and put that on the back of the bookmarks. In the end we went ...

 17/10/2025 BLOBS For this session we had prepared some photocopies of colourful blobs that people could then draw onto, and basically draw what they see. Like when you see a cloud and think it's shaped like a hat or something.  We then had everyone fill an A4 with blobs and pass that onto the next person, they would then draw on the blobs, again drawing what they see. I think this is a great way to be creative and really throw anything at the page. 

 16/10/2025 Colouring Book Zine After the illustration tennis session, one of our first thoughts for making a zine was a colouring book. The line-art that was created was perfect for colouring in sections, and we'd also be hitting a different target audience for it.  So first we had to count how many pages we had and make a little mock-up booklet so we could understand the layout. And it turned out that for the number of pages we had we'd need to make some patterned pages for behind the front and back cover. Helen created the front cover using the illustration society poster as inspiration (as well as the society's cat mascot), they used dip pen and ink and coloured some bits in pencil to get the colouring book idea across. For the pattern we used oil pastels/chalk to do wobbly lines that overlapped and coloured in part of it to again solidify the colouring book aesthetic.  We decided to make it all black and white, to save on cost, and then we'd have coloured p...

 Illustration Tennis  For the third society social we decided to do an activity called 'illustration tennis'. We had everyone get into pairs and gave them an A3 paper, then I would give everyone a prompt and they would have to draw it while taking it in turns to do a mark each. This means you would have a drawing of something that has been made by two people, most people communicated and were able to come up with recognisable drawings.  However, we found that the less people communicated the funner the outcomes would be and they came out quite creative and abstract. So, we suggested that people not communicated what they were putting on the page. We switched pairs every round so that everyone could talk with each other  and pair up different drawing styles. Then, after and few rounds we decided it would be fun to do a couple pages that would be sent around the whole table of people. These turned out VERY abstract and silly, it was a lot of fun.  Helena and I pla...

 First Society Zine  We came up with the idea of making a zine out of the Police Sketch  activity we did on 03/10/25, as we thought it'd be nice to give everyone something physical made of the silly art they created.  I had planned to create a simple 'page by page' zine, but we ended up doing three police sketches, so there turned out to be too many, and the zine would cost a lot. So we thought of making a 'foldy' zine instead, that way we could print the zine on one A3 page and fold it up into a little book that would open up. We made a mock-up: I had also made some sketches of the front cover while we were in the police sketch social, as I wanted to opinion of the others.  They all seemed to like the rightmost sketch, and Helena suggested we could do a collage-type style and actually scan in string, pins and cut-out letters. We decided that was a great idea and completely ran away with it. :) Helena and I decided we would meet on a day and compile the zine tog...

 Police Sketches For our second social of the society me, Helena and Jade came up with an idea to do a police sketch type game. Me (or someone) would give a description of a 'criminal' and then everyone would have to draw the person based on my description. Ideally they would be over-exaggerated description so that the outcomes could be silly and fun.  I pre-prepared a description so that it wouldn't put pressure on anyone to come up with one on the spot (including me). This turned out great and everyone was very engaged with the task, to the point I was worried because they were being too quiet. I thought that would be enough for everyone but they wanted to do more, so Adam gave his description of a 'perpetrator', and the so did Ash. We needed with three 'criminal' portraits which we stuck up on the walls so that we could get a real idea of what these scum looked like. We then came up with the 'crimes' they committed and the funny Ace Attorney style...