In preparation of etching my copper plate I worked out the imagery in my sketchbook trying to simplify the curtains and see what I needed for the line etch and what to add in aquatint. To 
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Tag Archives: work in progress
Week 10 Sketchbook
Week 9 Sketchbook
This week we were prompted to experiment with colour in our sketchbooks, I decided to work with charcoal as well as coffee and tea to stain my pages and use more consideration and restraint than I normally would. I worked in A5 from photos I had taken around the house that showed remnants of human presence, just quick shots as I went about my day and took the moment to consider the space and possible compositions.
Week 7 Sketchbook
Week 6 Sketchbook
For the theme of self I started to think that the human experience and the self is made up of the experiences we have and the things we see in everyday. I started by taking photos of the things around me, I particularly like the work of Stephen Shore and his series “American Surfaces” which inspired me. Shore photographs seemingly mundane occurrences in his daily life as he travelled such as his food people he met or places he stayed, creating a diary or documentation of his journey.
1972 Steven Shore, photograph from series “American Surfaces”
Shore practised self awareness and mindfulness in these moments by taking the time randomly each day to stop, take in the space around him and what is happening then capturing it. The photos below I have taken, more for a quick capture they aren’t of good quality more to get the objects and framing of possible drawings which I plan to keep doing to build up lots of possible imagery.
Zine Typography experimentation
Zine progress
Zine experimentation
I have begun drawing out my illustrations in A5 size for the zine, I had trouble getting them to have the same look as the other illustrations as they are much larger than my brainstorming ideas. This didn’t translate well in the bigger sizes partly because the markers were quite small so the line effect wasn’t the same and they just didn’t have the same aesthetic as the smaller drawings.
Further Brainstorming and Layout plan
I started by filling the ideas pages with small doodles of illustrations and iconography from the book using a green highlighter and blue marker which is a combo i’m very fond of that i think fits the theme quite well. I worked out further ideas and decided what exactly i wanted on each page and tested out different colours and ways of drawing them as i have a limited colour pallet i wanted it to be clear and not too busy. I though of the quote from the book “I ought to be thy Adam but am rather thy fallen angel” which immediately made me think of the creation of Adam as its very iconic imagery, except i made the hand of Adam skeletal as if the connection between man and creation of life is pointless and we cant evade death. I also went for lightning alluding to the method which animated the creature and decided to pair it with the figure and long shadow as they balanced each other and dealt with light and dark imagery. I also decided to use a selection of jars with body parts for the mad scientist frankenstein and his grizzly methods in creating his monster, i need to experiment more im not quite happy with the colouring yet it feels like something is missing. i decided to pair the skull and ink together as they contrasted really well and show the contrasting intellectualism and nature that victor went against in the book. I really like the double page spread of the gradually falling books as they show the domino effect science can have, how far is too far when scientists play with nature and what will cause this downfall.
Zine Moodboard
I have zeroed in on the visual aesthetics I would like to have for my zine and decided to focus just on the book “Frankenstein” so that it is a better flowing piece and connects throughout better. I’m going to experiment with illustration for this, mainly bold simplistic black and white designs with clear line art and pops of colour most likely shades of blue and purple. I will still use collage and typography as well, and start to map out more ideas.
These are two of my own images, I have experimented with the collage and ink which I really like but I will use sentences from newspaper rather than a word search as I think it looks too neat almost like binary. On the right I tried to do the simple line illustration but I don’t think I will do it in colour it looks too childish, ill try in more darker colours possibly just black and white. I think I will experiment more in illustrations for this zine.