Hawkwood Book Cover Comp

A few pages from my sketchbook for the Hawkwood book cover competition, since I've not posted anything yet. I'm currently changing my idea to create a better composition and overall aesthetic because the idea I had was too scene like, and I want to include collage to look exciting and be attractive to the audience which is 9-12 year olds.

Here I am looking at ways of drawing the two main characters, however, I want them to be quite anonymous since there is little description of them and it is for a mystery genre, so I want things to look ambiguous at this stage.

Panda Prints

After attending the Cyanotype workshop, I wanted to create my own prints that I could make easily. These aren't for any project I'm working on but I might apply the process somehow. I was experimenting with working with what I had and I'm quite pleased with the result, and of course it's also a fun process!

I chose a panda because I think its a widely loved animal and also when I think of pandas I think of the wwf logo. When my fabric paints arrive I want to print onto tshirts and tote bags and wanted to begin printing on paper to see what the quality would be like.

Cyanotypes

On Friday, I attended a workshop with the Photography society and created this Cyanotype. 

The process was very interesting and simple (once you have the chemical that causes the reaction), which only takes about 20 minutes in total to create. I also find the colour interesting, which you can manipulate in the process too.

Essentially, we collected natural objects and laid them onto a piece of paper covered in 'Ferric Ammonium Oxalate' and pressed them down with a piece of glass. We then went outside for the UV rays to make the reaction with the solution. You can see this happening as the paper changes from yellow to a greeny-blue colour. We then rinsed the paper in water and this is the end result.

Overall, an interesting process that I would be interested to try again if I had the correct equipment.

Artbook

The year artbook is themed with collective nouns for things. For example; a charm of magpies.

I chose 'A Coalition of Cheetahs'.

This is my final idea for this, I began by drawing out the silhouette of a cheetah and fit into it words that were relevant to the title, the word coalition and the animal. Originally this was going to be in colour, however, when I edited it on Photoshop, a simple background with black and white text looked more professional, and this could be successful as a print. 

Size = approx. A3

Sketch

A quick(ish) sketch of Holden Caulfield looking at the ducks flying over New York city. 

Just exploring all my options at this point and having a bit of fun in deciding what to do next! Trying to accomplish a little bit each day now, and keep myself inspired.

Size = A3

P.s. I've also I've finished reading 'The Lord of the Flies' by William Golding, so I'll definitely be choosing to create book jackets for that novel too. Next book I'm going to read will be 'The Mysterious Island' by Jules Verne.

Quote.

So I keep coming across a quotation by Anaïs Nin recently;

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

This quote hits home for me a lot and I feel inspired when I hear it. Its come up in a few places lately, such as in music and films I have enjoyed. Maybe it will influence my work, or maybe it will help me to contemplate things? Either way, heart lifting stuff.

Collage for FMP

Here I started making the collage. I had a basic knowledge of what colours I wanted everything to be and worked to that, tearing up magazines (mainly PostScript magazines, since these have small text which looks particularly effective in collage), which I added to a rough guideline. I used the main colours and improvised with some others too, whatever looked interesting and sometimes a challenge from the material I had.  I started with the red hunting hat, which the main character wears with the peak round to the back.

I feel the eyes look quite like Picasso's work, since I have added 2 eyes where only 1 would normally be seen from this angle. In the hair I included a picture of a squirrel and a giraffe's fur to illustrate the zoo that Holden Caulfield (protagonist) visits with his sister, Phoebe, in the book. For the face I also included train routes, because Holden is often travelling, in trains, buses and taxis. 

I have showed him breathing out smoke as he is a heavy smoker and also it is set in winter time so it could be interpreted as cold air coming from his mouth. This shows lots of text with lots of black and white printed images accompanying it. 

Finally I painted the background in acrylics. I firstly chose green however, green for a city didn't seem very appropriate, so I decided on purples and pinks, as they show a slight distortion. The finishing touches include collaged ducks flying behind in the cityscape, since Caulfield often thinks about where the ducks go when the lagoon in New York freezes over during winter. I'm going to attempt the same layout in gouache paints, but I think the collage makes Holden anonymous (which is what I wanted to achieve) and the mixture of materials creates a different atmosphere.

Evaluating the piece (and with advice from tutors), I should use a lighter tone and have more contrast in the final image. 

Size = 275mm x 200mm (spine = approx. 20mm)