Practice Enrichment: Development Sketchbook

I wanted to share some of my favourite pieces from my development sketchbook here.

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.

Practice Enrichment: Experiments pt i.

As mentioned previously, I have experience in working with collages, so felt I should start with this. I began by looking into others collages, and wanted to imitate these styles. Below are two that I felt inspired by: Colour collages. On the top, I cut out magazine advertisements and distorted the shapes, pasting them onto the page to show movement and fluidity. I added a girl above, and then placed text across to make it look less flat.
Below that, I cut out straight lines and circles, colouring them in and layering them on. I wanted this to feel more controlled, and think the lines popping out adds a nice dynamic to the method. Overlapping the layers has given the image depth and makes it look interesting.

From this I felt more confident creating my own collage. Below I created a dark, minimal collage to represent Dr Hurt. I added brown paper to age the article, as Dr Hurt is said to be thousands of years old: adding red to symbolize blood, and black and white to show the balance of good and evil. I also added a girl with black eyes, which is often thought to be demonic, and typography stating “to us, you’re one step from oblivion or one step from triumpth.” Which I feel is fitting for the character, alongside “Drop Dead” and “Liars.” I didn’t want the work to be too obvious.

 Another idea for collage is to stick to lines: but distort. The top image inspired me to imitate this due to the twisted, and quirkiness of the different lengths of the strips. I tried to imitate this but found it was difficult as I hadn't left a focal point, therefore when stretching and lengthening, the image was left with a gap between the strips. 

Below, I found an image that combines two images in strips, similar to double exposure. I think the anonymity is great, and that it is easily identifiable without being obvious, and still holds quite a confusing notion about it. I think this would work quite well for Dr Hurt.