Part three- Narrative illustration exercise 1

Research point:



- "Beer Street" and "Gin Lane"- William Hogarth - used denotation and connotation.  Anti-gin and pro-beer argument work.  Anti-gin work of Hogarth is quite a sad and gloomy picture.  He showed Gin Lane as it is a place where you as a viewer do not want to enter.  There is chaos and poverty   "Beer Street" is the complete opposite image, where everybody is relaxed, having plenty of time to drink beer.

This research is about the relationship between illustration and the text and in my opinion about the writer themselves.  As we can see the names of the writer like Roald Dahl and illustrator Quentin Blake or Neil Gaiman and  illustrator Dave McKean , clearly proves that illustrators have to understand the writer to create a good piece of work.  They have to live in creative 'symbiosis', where the illustrator knows how to make the written word even stronger and visible.  The illustrator has to present good listening skills and the writer good communication skills.  Sometimes there are exceptions where the writer is also the illustrator like Lauren Child (Charlie and Lola, That Pesky Rat)  or Emily Gravett (Monkey and Me, Meerkat Mail) or Beatix Potter ( Peter Rabbit).   


Exercise: You are what you eat

I have started this exercise from browsing the list of proverbs which could be good for this task. I am looking for the proverb that has enough room for imagination to create two version of the same proverb.

 

This is a list that I am wondering about:

 

"When in Rome, do as the Romans."

"People who live in glass houses should not throw stones."

"Better late than never."

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

"There's no place like home."

"The early bird catches the worm."

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth."

"Actions speak louder than words."


I think I have the winner :) I am going to choose "Better late than never." as it seems to have deeper meaning.

I am going to draw a spider diagram to see how many ideas I can produce about this proverb.









Once I have made my decision about which one is the best from this list, now is time for the visual research as I know what I am looking for.

For the first illustration I will need to find the image of: a human skeleton turned with his back towards the viewer (preferable with one hand up or lifted), a cigarette end.

To sum up this exercise I have to say that drawing from secondary sources was very helpful.  It gave me something secure to hold on to.  While my knowledge about the human skeleton was not that great, I could always come back to the picture I found on the internet,  The research was very helpful for that reason.  I managed to use the computer skills as well as drawing skills when creating this exercise.

Did I successfully use the media and apply it to my skills? Looking back I think I could explore this subject a bit more.  I did find it a bit difficult to look at one proverb in different ways at the beginning.  However it became fun for me later to start thinking outside the box and come up with different, opposite ideas.  "Better late than never" to me, looks like I managed to create the illustration about the beginning and the end.  What I mean by that is the beginning of the marriage and the end of life for someone who decided to quit smoking too late.

I supported my knowledge based on the art of Duda Gracz (Polish artist) to look at how he drew skeletons.  I have also used the book of the "female nude" to see how the body looks from behind to understand the movements and create a dynamic figure.  Those books helped my a lot to create a skeleton, which can be such a difficult subject.

I realised I have not experimented too much with the colours, not even the texture, however I was pretty happy with the first concept therefore I did not want to proceed further.  If I had more time, I would definitely work more on the colours of that work as it could possibly empower the message I was trying to get to the audience.  With my next few exercises I would like to work on developing my ideas more.