Evaluation of Prep

My journey began with the idea of a dark and twisted side to the alice in wonderland franchise. I was trying to find the sinister undertones that are present in the books and films, the idea of a young girl lost in a world that she had wished to be true, an escape that children often dream up and play in in their mind. Initially I thought of the idea that Alice was insane, locked in an asylum where she explored wonderland inside her mind. the world of wonderland and the characters from within it would appear to burst from her head as Alice looked on with menace on her face emphasising the idea that wonderland was normal to her, even though if you explain to someone about the world you vista in your head and described wonderland, they would thin you where a rambling mad person (that is how you would appear on the outside). This would make the viewer the in-between viewing what is inside from the outside and appreciating the world she conjured but understanding that it wasn't normal. Other ideas where to explore the "hippie" idea that Alice was on drugs, giant psychedelic mushrooms, opium and wild trips with strangers, living free and wild with all the cares of a child (none other than having fun). Exploring wonderland from a secondary point of view as if alice was taking you on her trip again putting you in-between by not being on a trip but experiencing hers. Another was the idea of the monsters that where created for wonderland, put the viewer in the place of alice and let them experience the fear that Alice would have felt when she came into contact with the jabberwocky or the bandersnatch. Though I realised that this was far off from my original brief which was to illustrate scenes from the book. I found one particular scene being the little crocodile poem

To find inspiration and guidance I looked to the original illustrator of the world, that being John Tinnel to make my on versions of his characters. As all of the illustration in the book where black and white I looked to modern illustrator. I wanted colour. I found Raphael Vicenzi. The vibrant explosive colours in his work where what I needed bring my illustrations to life.

Through the project some digital experiments which where a big help in the find of a composition of my final piece. I also looked into the defining features of characters, that being the face an looked into tutorials on how to draw things like lips and eyes as they are not my strong points.

In conclusion I was a little disappointed at the end of the exam as i wanted to do three illustrations and managed to finnish two because of my decision to do the little crocodile illustration as an A piece. This  do not regret as as the extra size allowed me to add more detail and rendering giving a more fuller picture. I liked the project but would have enjoyed it more if the brief was more flexible to let me develop my original ideas.

Digital experiments (illustration Brief).

I began to experiment with pictures using tutorials from the internet. All in completely different styles and representing different emotions, scenarios and a multitude of different layering, drawing and picture editing techniques done in Photoshop.

First off I explored a tutorial created to show how to make a digital collage, working in the style Miles Donovan using layering and blending techniques. The tutorial was very different to my outcome in the sense that it was a lot more regimented linear and was based on London. I on the other hand based mine on Alice in wonderland and tried to recreate a darker more overwhelming world with the focal point around Alice from the perspective that she had just arrived. I decided that the images of mushrooms that I obtained where too life like, plain and realistic, so decided to first off change the contrast of the background of the bottom image making it brighter, breaking away from reality. I used the blur tool to give a mirage/ hallucination effect. I did the same with the rest of the mushrooms I used to make them more vibrant. I crammed the images together to give the idea off being surround and emphasise the lost feeling that at Alice would have been experiencing. The dark colours give the idea of despair and being lost to the world. I placed the mad hatter looking down on her and the Cheshire cat above her shoulder to give the idea that they are tormenting her.

The second was a Chris Ede inspire illustration tutorial except instead of using a bird I chose to use a caterpillar to relate the piece to Alice in Wonderland. The caterpillar is blue and as Chris Ede uses varied shades of the same colour, I did the same using varied shades of blue. I used postures effects on the caterpillar to turn the shades into blocks of colour. I change the contrast an the lighting on the mushrooms to give more of a negative like effect as if they are getting brighter and eventually will turn bright white giving the piece a buzz about it. For the rest of the foliage  used roses poppies. The use of the poppies relates to the pipe the caterpillar smokes, most likely opium which comes from poppies and was a popular recreational drug but was also legal at the time sand so I began to make giant dense garden the surrounds the right hand side of the caterpillar. I used the selection tools to allow me to delete the shape of the flowers from other pictures. The other pictures were blue butterflies which allowed me to get caring textures of blue and shade on the picture and by layering and rotating the pictures and changing the fill and opacity it gives the "garden" some depth and makes it look like a a lot is going on in there. I then began to trace over the original pictures with the pencil tool so that I could obtain the details of the pictures. I then put the traces over the top to give the effect you now see. I made a copy of the rose trace and placed it on its own so there was no colour to fill the empty space, making it look as if fading into the mist of the dissolved background.

This tutorial that I followed taught me how to make a vintage collage poster using a few layering techniques and the pen tool. Originally it was for a flying woman but I decide to add a little humor an incorporate the vault boy from Fallout, a game based on a post apocalyptic world which occurred in the 50s. I put a nuclear explosion in the background and in the foreground wrote the words have a good day in the typical "perfect American white picket fence" style where there is an emphasis in remaining ignorant in the face of danger.

Photographers Gallery trip

The photographers gallery is located on rambles street, around five to ten minutes from Oxford Circus tube station and is the largest public gallery dedicated to photography in London and it allows visitors to explore photography in all its forms. When we visit the exhibition the work of Laura Letinsky, Geraldo De Barros, Jan Svoboda's, Peggy Franck, Nicole Wermers', Batia Suter, Anna Parkina, Roy Arden, Clunie Reid.

Geraldo De Barros was a Brazilian painter, photographer and industrial designer and he is considered a pioneer of modern artist photography as well as for a generation of contemporary practitioners. Born is Sao Paulo in 1923 Geraldo first established himself as a painter and a founding member of the expressionist painting studio Grupo 15. In addition to painting he began experimenting with photography and in 1946 joined the Bandeirant photo club who aimed to rejuvenated photography by bringing it away from the realism in photos which come strait from the camera. Geraldo was influenced by Gestalt theory and the idea of an incomplete form in relation to the complete version. I could see this in his exhibition even though it was unintentional because he died before finishing a collection of work, the picture bellow is an example of one of those pieces.(Link)

This piece is in that unfinished style and is one of the last  in a series that he worked on. I think that the idea  of work intentionally being left unfinished expresses that the true art in in the preparation. The taking of the photo, the editing, developing and presenting of the piece. Using this picture as an example of that, the image looks as if the artist has posted a negative up on a wall to inspect the quality and details but also to compare against the other photographs they had taken.  They could all be of the same place, but on every occasions, one factor could be different meaning that every picture is unique. The Colours present to me the idea of a dream-scape. vibrant unnatural and out of this world. When I think of the significance of this in relation to the time period where there weren't computers with advanced programs like today Photoshop and illustrator and so most experiments would have been done by changing setting on the camera and by hand and most probably outcomes accidental adding o the art in journey idea. As he was elderly at the time he crated this image it would have been unintentional but the colours could be related to the prevalent underground electronic music and recreational drug culture. Psychedelically vibrant colours but also a lot of the music was created through experimentation and by accident.

John Tenniel in-depth analysis

Sir John Tenniel was a British illustrator, graphic humorist and cartoonist who's work was prominent in the later half of the 19th century in England. He is considered important in terms of the social, literary and history of art in that period. In 1893 he was knighted by Queen Victoria for his achievements in his field. Two of his most well known accomplishments are his work as the principle political cartoonist for England's Punch magazine (a weekly humor and satire magazine lasting from 1841 to 1992, drawing its name from the glove puppet act Punch and Judy) and later Lewis Carroll's Alice in wonderland and Alice through the looking glass.

This illustration is John Tenniel's interpretation of Davy Jones sitting on his locker. This image itself is dated to 1892 and shows Davy Jones reading a chart if the 1789 Ferrol harbour which was home to the HMS Howe which had run aground the same year. Davy Jones itself is an idiom for the bottom of or death at sea. The idea that when a person died there, their body would sink down into Davy Jones locker where it would remain. This satire illustration was making a joke of the incident by showing Davy jones looking for the ship on the map. 

Here is another example of the the work of John Tenniel. The piece was taken from Lewis Carroll's Alice in wonderland and shows the caterpillar smoking a pipe and talking to her as she peeps over the giant mushroom. When I look closer at the techniques that where used to apply the image, it appears    that initially pen an ink where used to draw the image because of the defined lines and the use of cross hatching. But of course this would be very in-efficient because thousands of copies would have been made. There for they would have created etchings and then put them into a print press.

 
In the sequel, Alice through the looking glass, Alice encounters the Jabberwocky. She first discovers the Jabberwocky in a poem in the back to front world of a looking glass. The Jabberwocky is a large reptile like creature, many features where drawn from dinosaurs, its scaled leathery skin and wings resembling those of a pterodactyl as well as its snake-like tale and claws with talons.

Raphael Vicenzi in-depth analysis.

Raphael Vicenzi is a self taught illustrator who lives in Brussels, Belgium. His work is heavily influenced by the beauty and the fashion industry as well as street art and graffiti and into his mixed media style he incorporates soft and delicate lines with with some dark colours and strong outlines. He also uses mixed digital media, painting and water colours with textures to express his ideas and emotions.

(Link) Here are two typical pieces of Raphael Vicenzi work and two that I particularly like and find relevant to my idea for a final piece. They are a jam packed explosion of colour, imagery and typography where each part seems to be interlinked in the same way that the worlds that Alice explores on her adventures live and breathe as one. The bright colours are a true visual representation of a persons imagination, full of energy and of course Raphael's work is his imagination on paper. He does this by bundling what may seem like completely unrelated images like phones and birds in the picture on the left or in the picture on the right mushrooms and donkeys which on the surface doesn't make sense but in the head of the artist they do. In the same way that when we daydream, we too will have thoughts that to us make sense but to others don't and it is this concept I will take into account when developing my idea because the world that Lewis Carroll has many elements which appear insane but in his imagination may have been normal.

(Link) Wonderland and through the looking glass contain sinister undertones. Characters like the Queen of Hearts and the Mad-hatter especially, display schizophrenic and sociopathic behaviour. Alice, a child, is traveling through an unknown land with strange creatures, people and a warped, dreamscape eco-system are the sort of thing you may experience in a nightmare or the delusions of a mad person. For that reason I chose these images, the one on the right because it is of a young woman/ girl who is close to the common interpretation of what Alice looks like in terms of the body profile. Long hair, slim and elegant and confidant in posture. I took the picture on the left because the is similar the the idea of my composition. Alice in black and white and the world of wonderland in colour but appearing to break out from her head as if escaping her mind.

Mood Board

illustration brief art in depth analysis.

Julia herself graduated from Kingston University in the U.K in 2007 with a BA in animation and illustration with her first major piece, her graduation piece receiving a lot of exposure on the internet and making its way to the front page of youtube as well as receiving one million his within the first two months. Since then she has gone on to complete an MA at the royal college of art and has been commissioned by clients such as E4, Skins, MTV, Virgin and Toyota.

      

This illustration is on a greetings card printed 6 by 4 inches and the image is of an elephant and a wild boar on horseback in the mountains. They are also satin coated to give better colour reproduction.  The artist who created the card is called Julia Pott and the piece is titled, "I love that you're here with me". Julia employs an amateurist style often referred to as awkward animations combined with anthropomorphises which she uses to explore the motivations between human relationships where by characters are represented by "mildly ridiculous animals". Although the style at first may appear childish, on closer inspection you can see the amount of detail that she has put into the hair of the animals and objects such as the log in the bottom right hand corner, the trunk of the elephant that is riding the horse as well as the trees in the background. This helps to create areas of visual texture where by the audience can tell by looking at the area what it feels like. Common to her work Julia uses predominantly muted colours with minimal vibrant ones helping to create a dreamy atmosphere and variation in tones which help the audience to focus on the key parts of the image. Where most artist would use thick bold lines to make parts of the image stand out Julia uses thin ones which helps to create this awkward style and the composition looks as if she meant the piece to appear like an instillation with each image standing in its own layer from front to back. I believe she did this because her work is meant to be personal, in effect she is creating what she feels inside, in her head from her experiences and the style is a representation of her personality. This layered effect to me illustrates the layers of our memories in combination with our feelings, each individual drawing stands on its own like each feeling is interdependent of another but to remember, we recollect specific parts of memories and feeling of the time and piece them together to recreate the scene in our head. Again I believe Julia uses her "almost" childish, awkward style to show how people become a "teenager" again when they are in love.

In comparison to the first piece which seems to be embracing a memory of two people who have feelings for each other, this seems to be more about regret. Initially I noticed the picture isn't as busy as the first, an almost barren land scape, dark and cloudy with lightning in the background. On viewing this picture you feel a sense of emptiness, minimal dull muted colours and the grainy texture used on the landscape create a tense atmosphere. The animals have been brought into the foreground and unlike the background the grainy texture wasn't applied so imidiate attention is brought to them instead. The same technique of "visual texture" has been applied to this piece through the fur of the animals, warm and fuzzy clearly showing that there is or at least were feelings of attraction between them. Their body language, lack of eye contact, hands in pockets and avoiding posture tell me that the relationship between them was at an early stage they maybe hadn't told each other how they felt and it was cut short. My understanding of the method behind the composition is that the animals visualy represent the moment and the background is a personification of what they felt at the time.

After looking at the work of Julia Pott, watching interviews and her animations I have defiantly concluded that she is a romantic, I have enjoyed exploring her style and her combination of texture and muted colours as well as her "awkward animations"  which are certainly a representation of her personality. She has defiantly taught me something about incorporating emotions into my work. As I will be creating an illustration themed by the "Alice" and "Wonderland" which incorporates feelings of needing to be connected and finding a way to fit in I will try to use similar techniques in order to bring the audience into the piece.

Exam Project Brief