Discover Top Posts Tagged with #narrative portrait

Evaluation

I really enjoyed this module (action in practice) as we had the chance to create work for a live project with Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. I found this project very different from the previous project as we had very short time frames to make three pieces of work ( an A4 portrait, a box, and the zine and 6 postcards for a pop up shop). The short time frames made me more organised and I had to work hard all the way through the project to stay on top of everything. This blog and my three sketchbooks really helped me to record all my research, experimentation and process which i could then look back on and reflect.

The A4 Portrait

The idea for the characters in my portrait came from a mixture of cultural art in the gallery. I was interested by many things in the gallery such as the Egyptian canopic jars, Ancient Near East babylonian figures, carved totem poles and the unusual expressions of the historical traditional painted portraits. Every time i visited the gallery i absorbed so much information that it was hard for me to focus on one thing in the gallery. To resolve this i decided to illustrate this information overload by creating characters that have features of several different pieces in the gallery.

Inspired by Juliana Bollini’s quirky paper mache of people i decided to explore creating my characters out of paper mache. I really liked the outcome of these as the paper mache combined with paint emphasised the characters features creating bold, fun and colourful models, perfect for the audience of young children who will view the portraits at the gallery. Also the texture of the paper mache was quite rough and imperfect reflecting a lot of the sculptures seen in the gallery.

I also explored paper cuts/collages for my characters i had designed which were inspired by Juan Carlos. However i felt that the paper collages were not as strong pieces of work as the paper mache but i did go back to some of this paper collage work later on in my project when i created my zine.

The Box (The 6 Word Narrative)

For the 6 word narrative part of the project we had to communicate a story about our portraits (within 6 words) which would be illustrated on a box. The box was to be displayed with our portraits in the gallery so i knew the box had to carry the same theme of fun, bold and bright colours so that the audience could make the connection of the two pieces. I struggled to think of six words that explained my portrait so I created a short narrative about my paper mache model of the woman babylonian figure. The narrative really helped me to not only pick six words but how I could use text and image together to illustrate my story. To reflect my portrait I used paper mache to create interesting shapes on the box which I could paint over and make into images and words.

To inspire my typography and the use of text and image i looked at artists Sarah Fanelli and David Shillinghaw. They both combine their illustrations cleverly with text in a fun and exciting way to narrate a story and communicate positivity to the audience.

Overall i liked the outcome of my box. I think it reflected my paper mache portrait as it gave the same texture and the dusky brown with bright colours as the portrait. I like the paper mache on the box as it creates interesting shapes that i could combine with text. I illustrated elements of the babylonian woman in the portrait (such as the scarf, bowl, eyes etc) to show a clear link between the portrait and the box. I think the illustrations help to narrate the story and make it fun to look at.

Zine, Postcards and Cut Outs for the Pop Up Shop

For the final part of the project we had to create a zine/book and six postcards that we could sell on a pop up shop. I had to really think about my presentation and creating professional work for an audience for this part of the project so that my work engaged and visually communicated clearly with the public.

Inspired by the zine “Swim” by Jeannie Phan i decided i wanted to create a short step by step story of my characters coming to life in the gallery. This idea was also inspired by films i’ve seen growing up as a child of inanimate objects coming to life, especially “Night at the Museum”. I sketched out story boards in my sketchbook to generate ideas for my story until i came up with one that I liked. To illustrate the zine i used a variety of mediums such as oil pastels, paint, collage, chalk and digital. I looked at Jill Calder’s work for inspiration on creating texture and different marks within my work to reflect the rough surface of the paper mache used in the two previous parts of the project.

For my postcards i chose three designs from the portrait part of the project and three designs i’d used in the zine so that theres was a variety of my 3D and 2D work. I had some trouble when I printed out my postcards as the prints came out with white lines running across some of the images and the back of the postcards weren't exactly in line. To resolve this I re-printed them again, making sure all the backs were perfectly in line and that all the postcards were the same size. Next time to avoid disappointment at the printers i need to tell them if i am not happy with the print and i’ll go to a printers that specialises in duplicate printing. I will also make sure i print my work at least a week before the deadline so that I still have plenty of time if a printing error happens again.

I was happy with the display I created. I think the cut outs made my work stand out even more and created a fun colourful display to attract buyers. To take this project further I created little animations (on photoshop) of my zine and I uploaded it as a webcomic online so that an online audience can view my work.