MAKING A ZINE!

I have returned to UNI!
Our first mini brief that we've been set is to make a ZINE! I love zines and the quality and asthetic of them is something I've been passionate about for a while now!
I began to think about my summer work and how I could develop and extend on this in order to make a zine to represent Angela Carter.

WHAT DO I WANT TO SAY ABOUT CARTER?

• I would like to have a comment on the delicate nature of her work, I feel that it sometimes feels almost 'dainty' yet at the same time beautiful and powerful.
• Femininity
• Freedom
• Empowerment
• Exploration
• Sexuality
• Vulnerable
• Overcoming emotions and violence
• Women as objects, but at the same time, overcoming this.
• Myths and Magic
• Distortion
• Imagination 

To me, from my research so far, Angela Carter's work is so natural and almost feels 'cold' and whimsical. I began my research for the zine by looking at other illustrators work that gave me the same feeling as I get when reading Carter's work. 

Miroco Machiko

 

Aiden Koch

DESCRIPTIVE WORDS FOR CARTER. 

WHIMSICAL
Playful quaint or fanciful, especially in an appealing or amusing way.

ENCHANTING 
Delightfully charming or attractive

SPELLBINDING 
Holding ones attention completely as though by magic/fascinating.

When reading carter's writing, I almost have a specific feeling or emotion. I feel like it's enchanting and natural and almost empowering? I feel like her words have a colour palette in the way that she writes. I explored them with colour pencil but I want to look at this more and more to really pin down how I feel about her work.

 

From this experiment I feel that I have made a solid start on my research and the potential 'theme' of my zine. i want to look at the colours in her work and also the metaphors that she uses and I've fallen in LOVE with!!♡♡♡

 I made another experiment with colour and added a relevant quote beneath it in order to explore how the colours can work together in different mediums.

 

"No. I was not afraid of him; but of myself. I seemed reborn in his unreflective eyes, reborn in unfamiliar shapes"

Although I was happy with the outcome of this experiment, I feel like some of the colours are too bright and for me, doesn't accurately represent the emotions and feelings being Carter's writing. I'm going to work SO hard in this whole project to really hit the nail on the head by finding what her writing means to me in a visual form!

 

I tried again with the exact same idea and took the mark making and colours that I liked from the previous experiment and looked at how this can be used to make a series of colours and marks that I feel is more representative of my inital feelings to Angela Carter's work. I might use this as a page in my zine, I feel like the quote is relevant and suggests a blur or a whirl of emotions, which is for me, the same explanation that Carter was trying to imply through her writing,

AFTER FIRST EXPERIMENTS, WHAT DO I WANT TO SAY IN MY ZINE? 

• COLOURS (the colours I feel Carter's writing style represents)
  

• SHAPE/PATTERN (the whimsical flow of her writing style and how I feel I can portray this through shape and pattern.)
  

• METAPHORS (in some way represent the metaphors that Carter uses in her work, I'd like to look at her writing as a description piece and see how I can use drawings and image making to represent these metaphors)

Following on from my first experiments and creation of the page for my zine, I thought about how I could make the zine flow through.
I could make these pattern/colour driven designs in different colours that represent different sides of Carter's writing. 
I feel so FAR, through my first bits of research that Carter has three different 'sides' to her writing style, or I guess for me, three different feelings depending on the story of poem that I'm reading.

THE NATURAL SIDE.
Green, Blue, Brown, Turquoise, Mustard

THE FEMININE SIDE.
Red, Pink, Gold, White

THE PURE SIDE.
White, Yellow, Pink, Silver

I created similar expierments, based on this theory and I was quite pleased with the outcomes.

 

I happy with the colour themes that I've used for these patterns, particularly, the pink one, I did this on a smaller scale, perhaps that allowed me to focus in on the shapes rather than the smaller marks getting lost in the context of the bigger marks on the page! Although to give them some context, I'm considering adding drawings over the top of them relating to the quotes. 

In my work last year, I haven't really made such almost 'abstract' work, I found myself sticking to the obvious, trying to avoid work that would make it less straight away 'obvious' about what I was trying to say, but I'm actually really happy with how I've explored Carter's work and have found what I like about her writing, I'm more able to make relevant work that actually has context and meaning behind it!!

I looked back a my summer work and though about combining some of my life drawings with the coloured background, it would add context and create an interesting difference between the more defined lines and the messier coloured backgrounds.

 

Although not the most proportionally accurate life drawing, I like the pose that the woman has, I feel she's vulnerable yet is somewhat empowered by her naked form!! 

I started to experiment with overlaying her body on the colour and after a few experiments I realised that I didn't want the drawing to be so obvious. I eventually came up with the final design which I felt showed the woman in a subtle yet effective way, exploring the way her body is a secret and she feels vulnerable yet at the same time she's on full display 'AS BARE AS A LAMB CHOP'. 

 

Following the success of this image, I took a similar approach for the white patterned background. I wanted a simpler image, so thought about Carter's exploration of the natural world and thought about using a simple image of flowers.

Following on from the theme of flowers and nature, I began to consider the use of a more delicate approach.

Over summer, I had been collecting pressed flowers in order to respond to this project. I feel like dried and pressed flowers are not only delicate, but they're also beautiful and empowering, they represent many things about carter's work.  I have used the pressed flowers in a multitude of way throughout the zine by collaging them in various patterns and shapes around the page. I was really pleased with the outcomes of this and I feel like it represented a multitude of things that I was trying to say about Carter.