Practice Enrichment: Experiments part ii.

Anonymity is a huge aspect of Dr Hurt. I want to use this in my final piece, but have yet to find a way to do this. Looking at the way others have produced and taken this idea on, to create a secret identity and manipulate an image to this extent has really helped me to come up with some ideas of this manner.

With Dr Hurt being a super villain, I felt it important to look into dark illustration styles. Paint on black and white images creates this kind of atmosphere, and with the added texture of the brush strokes it looks quite sinister. I wanted to experiment with the idea of the secret identity, and felt hiding the face made this possible. This is one of my ideas for my final piece.

Sandra Chevrier creates intricate illustrations using water colour, and combines them with rippings from pages of comic book strips. Her style is extremely influential and carries both the concept of an image, whilst merging the comic book aspect, without being over the top. I recreated this myself.

I began by scrapping the idea of watercolours, and layering the cuttings on top of a magazine image. I think the colour image with a black and white comic was more effective than the opposite, and I feel it's quite stunning. I also preferred the messy, collaged strips rather than the full image, as they highlight the features of the face more strongly. 

I wanted to try the images exactly the way that Sandra uses them, so I created two quick watercolour images, and added the layers of strips on top. I feel it looks striking, with the print contrasting the softness of the paint and leaving it looking more prominent. 

This is quite an abstract composition. It reminds me of a Picasso piece, with the eyes out of place. The top two images resemble one another, and when ripped through to reveal I feel this similarity is quite intense, bold and charismatic on the page. In contrast, the lower image is half colour and half black and white -- this dynamic looking compelling and mysterious. It reminds me of double exposure, but created in a different way.

I found an image that inspired me to create this, shown in the middle right of the page. Ripping away the eyes of an image, which are often called the “gateway to the soul," to reveal a character. I think this is quite powerful, whilst being extremely simple.

I think after looking through these I have quite a few ideas for my Dr Hurt final. I especially like the idea of ripping away the eyes as I feel it's so incredibly simple, but effective. I want to continue to expand and practice with different processes to create these.