IDEA PICTURES

After creating the zine I felt excited and ready to start work on a brief with my knowledge and passion about Angela Carter as an author.
I love the idea of working with visual metaphors as i feel this is exactly what Angela Carter tries to portray in her writing.
As soon as we were briefed, images and ideas came rushing into my mind, I have a specific way that I want to portray Carter and I began making roughs exploring different stories, themes and characters that have stood out to me in my work that I have explored of hers so far.

SQUARE (110MM * 110MM)
LANDSCAPE (220MM * 110MM)
PORTRAIT (110MM *220MM) 

ROUGHING

HOW DID I FIND MAKING 60 ROUGHS? 

• Extensive - making a (what seemed like) ALOT of roughs, really made me think about what and how I wanted to portray Angela Carter, what did i want to SAY about her and how could different illustations show this without being to blatent and obvious!

 

• Helpful - i loved having to really wrack my brains for ideas, it really made me push myself coming up with 60 different concepts, but at the same time, i found it incredibly helpful for idea development and I know that now in the future I'll be able to come up with even more successful designs.

• Thought Provoking - the more roughs that I made, the more ideas I began to consider and think of, i became more creative and expressive with my ideas and this was really helpful when it came to thinking and creating visual metaphors!

 The main themes I wanted to explore in my work was Angela's exploration of fertility and the comparison of the female form and nature. I love this idea, i find it delicate and natural and feel like I would be able to make successful illustrations by exploring this concept further. 
I based most of my roughs around this concept, along with the charatcers and other concepts that Carter explores. 
During the feedback session with tutors and peers I was told that my inital roughs represented Angela Carter well, i LOVED that i had been able to do this, I want to try so hard to really get that feeling that her writing creates for me!
I was told this feeling is called : VISCERAL

• Based on a deep feeling and emotional reaction rather than on reason or thought.

I find this concept really interesting and want to explore in more depth what it is about Carter's work that makes me feel this earthy, natural, empowering way!  
 
I was told that the Egg design, where a collection of natural elements such as leaves, flowers and plants are spewing out of an egg works well in suggestion the idea of fertility, I definitely want to explore this concept further.

NEXT STEPS

I began to develop my roughs further, looking at the chosen ones from the crit in more detail, exploring composition and how the visual metaphors could come across more successfully.

 

SQUARE DESIGNS 

• Although in my crit, i was told that the egg design worked the best, I still wanted to explore my other roughs a little further as I personally liked the design.
• I played around with the composition of the egg design, adding elements such as extra flora or other elements of nature such a toadstools and leaves and even other eggs but in some ways i found that this took away from the original idea. I'll wait until the crit to see other people's opinions but that's how I feel about my designs SO FAR!
• I'll also have to be considerate of colour, I find that the peachy pink colour represents fertility quite well, but again I'll see the opnions of others during the crit.

 

LANDSCAPE DESIGNS

• In the crit I was told that my inital heart design worked well due to the composition of it, I do like the design of it but I feel it's slightly too simple, but I can't work of if this is me feeling the need to overcomplicate pieces or if it actually IS too simple!
• I tried the heart idea as a metaphor for life and feminine life surrounded by and being compared to nature, in other compositions in order to see if it can work when put in different compositons.
• I really like the design with hands around the heart, almost clutching life, but again, I'm not sure if this is just overcomplictaing the concept as a whole or if its adding to it. I suppose this is something that I'll have to ask people in the crit. 

 

PORTRAIT DESIGNS

• Again, following on from the crit, I was told that the design with the naked woman with flower heads and necks works the best. This idea was based on the quote from the bloody chamber but I find it really intruging as a concept and want to take it forward into a physical sense!
• I played around with the design, adding two women, zooming in and zooming out, this helped me to get a sense of how the idea and concept could change just through tweaking the composition of the work.
• I struggled a bit with deciding which rough would work best and this has been an issue for me throughout all of the size roughs now, but i'll wait until the crit and then take the advice from my peers and use this in a constructive way!! 

MEGA CRIT NUMBER 1

 

• The mega crit was really helpful in terms of deciding which designs to take forwards even further to develop into my final designs.
• The majority of feedback suggested that I continue with the simple egg design, with no extra detail or nature added to it, as it takes away from the concept
•  A few suggested that i take the design with the sea maidens face forward, but I feel, although i Like the concept of this design, it wouldnt be relevant and correspond with the other two concepts, and i'd like my work to work as a set or series of 3!

• Alot of people suggested that the simpliest heart design would look the best compared to the others as it looks the most 'editorial' which I agree with, the bold shapes and clear imagary are simple enough to see what I'm trying to say if the illustration were alongside a text. 

I also asked people what they thought of the marks and lines that I often do in the background of images, I wondered if this took away from the drawings and made the piece confusing? People said:

• Possibly, still think you could incorporate pattern well though.
• I think they add alot to your imgary and style, but it would be interesting to see a more simplified version.
• I think it's personal preference, I really like it, but if you do include the marks, i would do so sparingly. Very nice.

Based on this feedback, I will be considerate of how I use the marks, making sure I don't overcomplicate the designs, but I'll still use them as I feel that especially for Angela Carter's work, they add an enchanting and magical touch! 

DEVELOPING IDEAS FURTHER

 

SQUARE DESIGN

• Following on from my feedback in the crit, I was told that the simple egg design worked the best.
•  I experimented with keeping the simple egg and adding more of the natural elements in order to see how this could work, I wasn't keen, i feel like again, it just takes away from the concept of it.
• The next step was to experiment with colour and pattern and how I could use this in the best way possible to represent the concept of fertility within my work.
• The peachy pink colour definetly works the best as it gives me the feelings of new born and purity, but again, I'll ask the opinions of my peers in the crit.

 LANDSCAPE DESIGN

• Following on from the crit, the heart design with the heart in the centre of the image was defietly the most popular. I feel like the composition of this rough is the most effective element of it.
• I began to think about other ways I could have the heart image in the landscape format, I added some extra elements of flora and nature to increase the 'earthy' and natural feelings of the piece.
• I'm personally not sure if this adds to the design or just over complicates it and takes away from what I'm trying to convey in my work.
• I often struggle with the idea of overcomplication, it's something that I really need to work on and i feel like an editorial illustration is a great opportunity to simplify my work down to be able to get across a message!

PORTRAIT DESIGN

•  In the mega crit, the most popular design was the rough of the two women with flower heads, I agree! I think this design will work the best in terms of representing the idea of feminity.
• I now had to decide whether I wanted the focus to be on the female bodies or on the flowers and nature. This would determine how the image would be seen so I feel like this is an important choice and is one that i'll ask in the next peer review before continuing with the final design!

 PEER REVIEW

• The peer review was a helpful way for me to find out the opinions on my more refined roughs before creating the final designs.

Suggestions given included:

• Have vines wrapping around the egg and keep it centred.
• Dark background around the egg/heart/bodies takes away from the idea of fertility and feminitity.
• Experiment with green as colour alongside the pink to show the natural elements.
• Keep it simple!

 Overall I found this peer review really helpful to get a sense of other opnions on my final designs. I had a last few tweaks to make and questions to ask before I began creating my designs. I agree with all of the suggestions given and it just took the suggestions from other people to make me see this!

CREATING FINAL DESIGNS

Once I had the detailed roughs of what my final designs were going to look like, I could begin to draw the final illustrations for the three pieces. 

I have decided that I would like to use a digital process to add the colour onto the final drawings, I feel like this will add a sense of profesionalism to my work and will allow me to create multiple copies with a clean finish to them.

Despite wanting this professional digital finish to my work, i still want my work to look very analogue and have the 'real' hand made asthetic to them, I'll have to experiment and play around with this concept.

I scanned in my final drawings and began to play around with a digital way of adding colour, I really enjoyed being able to see my designs 'come to life' in a way, I feel like all the roughing has been an extensive but very helpful process and it was almost an achievement to be able to see my work in a digital format!

Initially, I was struggling to find a way to add colour in a way that didn't look purely digital. I'm really not pleased with how the images are turning out using this way of colour blending. I need to be more experimental with how i'm adding colour if i still want to achieve this anologue appearance that I've set out to achieve!

I began to think about more creative ways that I could add colour to my work, especially as I wanted to keep the handmade feel and texture to my work, i considered the use of scanned paint marks and pencil marks!

After using the same colour theme that I had previously decided on, I began to experiment with using the multiply tool on photoshop to overlay the paint mark samples. I was instantly more pleased with the outcome of this and started to make tweaks and changes until I was happy with the result of all of the designs!