Line/Tone/Mark/Pattern

Sticking with the theme of classic Horror movie icons for this task I chose the figure of Robby the Robot from The Forbidden Planet for my tonal drawings. I thought the best way to get an understanding of how the character looks and his proportions and features was to first do a tonal study of him in pencil withvarying lights and darks.

I used this image as a reference for the rest of my drawings as I wanted to create a range of different tonal values on each drawing without just using images from the film as direct reference. I think this method has allowed me to explore and experiment within tone and not limit myself purely to pencil shaded line drawings. I used ink, pens, paint and sow pencils dipped in black ink to play with how different materials express light and dark in different ways. Although the pencil and pen drawings are more accurate to the look of the character, I think my ink drawings are stronger as they are a little more loose and I was focusing more on what the individual parts and mechanics would look like in certain lighting and setting rather than creating a super realistic representation of the character, as that's not really as interesting. 

I also tried expressing the character using no definitive like work and just using areas and patches of varied tone, and I think these work quite well as more expressive representational drawings, which again I find now to be more compelling than a straightforward shaded line drawing.