Diyana Abbasali

Having been blessed with a talent to draw I always try to make birthdays cards for my friends and family. As well as drawings pictures of things that they like, e.g. cars for my dad, anime characters for my friends etc.

Being a huge dog fan, I loved to draw the famous Disney dog - Pluto!! And on the release of Disney's Bolt, I found another Disney dog to draw and gain inspiration from :) These pictures where drawn from artbooks, pictures and films. (All Copyrights to Disney)

I have been a fan of Disney ever since I can remember. My favourite Disney film is 'The Lion King', and it was from watching that film that I aspired to persue a career in animation. :) Being a fan of Disney I was always asked to draw some of their most well-known and loveable caharacters for either friends or family.

During the three years of my course I have had the great pleasure of being able to draw some of the animals at Marwell Zoo. Posted above are a few examples of my work.

It was in my second year that I discovered my passion for character design, having worked on the 2009 gradation film 'Misiba', I was given the chance to design one of the main characters within the film, that of the lion. For which I did reference drawings, and then from I there begun to create some lion designs.

As well as life drawing, we were encouraged to gain inspiration from the great masters, by doing artist studies and going out to museums to drawing sculptures, to further improve our sense of three dimensionality. The artist studies that I have referenced are taken from Durer, Rembrandt and Delacroix. My sculpture drawings are from the British Museum in London.

Here are a few examples of some my life drawing, I have mainly selected pieces from my second year and third year.

I thoroughly enjoyed my foundation course and it put me in good stead for my BA (Hons) degree in Animation Production at The Arts University College at Bournemouth (formally known as The Arts Institute at Bournemouth). Having been on the course I have been able to further improve and develop my skills, within both life drawing and animal drawing, from which I feel that I have been able to highly enchance my observational skills.

It was from this concept that I started to design some characters of my own. (Pets and owners sharing a similar look). :)

Having successful completed my A-levels I went on to do a foundation degree in Art and Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where I was able to further broaden my knowledge and skill base within Art and Design. I managed to produce a whole variety of pieces, ranging from sketches, fashion designs, mono-prints, and ceramic models etc. For one of my final pieces I gained inspiration from that of my AS Level work and made another two way picture, trying to capture the idea of 'People and their Pets', and the concepts of owners looking like their pets and vice versa.

As well as animals I enjoy drawing well known anime characters, from shows such as Naruto, Bleach, Wolf's Rain, Fruits Basket etc. I managed to find these early drawings, that I had done almost 5 years ago, as well as a few that I drew for my best friend (she is a big fan of Renji and Byakuya Kuchiki from Bleach). I have decided to put them up, so I can compare them with that of the ones I have managed to draw now in 2010. (Hoping to see the improvements!!!)

As well as drawing, painting, lino printing and spray painting I also took great pleasure in creating models, I especially enjoyed creating my model tiger - Rufus. He was made for my A-Level Exam and he is made from papier mache, and is very large! Before I made him I also made a few test papier mache animals, including a baby crocodile and kangaroo.

The next series of pictures are from my second year of A-level, in which I started to gain more confidence in my ability and continued to further improve my practice and skill.