As an introduction to the project Hybrid Forms, we had a mini-workshop in which we were asked to begin thinking in three dimensions. Instead of working in the usual way, for example in sketchbooks or on screens, we created our initial ideas in 3D. Using either lego, spaghetti, modeling clay and other found objects we constructed and photographed our 3D drawings. The idea was to start getting us to think about spatial structures in the same way product designers, fashion designers and architects might need to think about when designing in 3D and construction. 

 

As a final piece for ‘Hand and Eye’, we were given a screen printed 9-panel storyboard. We were given specific guidelines including only being able to use dry media and we were only allowed to use three colours throughout the whole piece. The purpose of this exercise was to see how we would handle the restrictions placed upon us by demonstrating adaptability and working to professional specifications and formats. It was also to see how we would manage development and refinement of our narratives and see how we would improve our story and its readability.

I had a personal tutorial with my tutor in which I was able to receive advice for my final storyboard. Although I didn’t necessarily want to include a literal ‘monster’ in my storyboard, I was advised to do so, especially now that I gained 3 extra panels to work in. The project brief focuses specifically on character design, storytelling and -building, and the 9-panel storyboard is meant to illustrate a song using the constructed figurative character from the first phase of the project. This made me reconsider using my monster in my final story.

The main thing I was unsure about was fitting a monster into my story. The first thing I did was sketch out a few ideas onto paper. Having made my little “Create your own monster” booklet helped me with different designs. At first, I sketched out a few monsters in more detail but once considering what they would look like in the storyboard this image didn’t fit in. Being limited to only a few colours also meant I couldn’t go into much detail, but actually, filling in the monster with a block colour suited the overall aesthetic of the story much more. I used the same colour for the monster as well as for the characters, making the two relatable. Placing the whole story into a dream belonging to the monster was a way for me to incorporate the monster into the story. 

The rest of my storyboard stayed very similar to my previous drafts. I was pleased with the change I had made to layering the ocean and I stuck with the same colours as my last storyboard. I also stuck to only outlining my work in the same coloured pencil as before, because after experimenting with using a black fine-liner as an outline, this didn’t work very nicely. Having drafted the story twice gave me the opportunity to try out multiple scenes, which I was able to adapt to the 9-panel storyboard. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to add the lyrics to the story, because of the restrictions we had for our final piece. 

I decided it was necessary for me to rework my 6-panel storyboard in many ways. The most important change I made was considering the colours I applied in more depth, as well as changing my style of work a little. 

In my first draft, I used the block colour method. At first, I thought this may work well but upon further consideration, I decided my storyboard could look much better if I incorporated different tones of the same colour. Although we are limited to using only 3 colours in our storyboard, we are able to use different tones of the same colour. I felt like I could use this to my advantage and adapt it in a way that suits me. As I wasn’t present for the ‘Jukebox Jive’ workshop I wasn’t aware that we weren’t able to use words in the storyboard, which is another thing I had to change. Lastly, I used a black fine-liner to outline my figures, which seemed a bit unnecessary, because by doing so I had already lost out on one colour and overall the effect didn’t turn out as well as I thought it might. This reminded me of a quote from the book “Interaction of colour – by Josef Albers” in which he discusses that no matter how much knowledge one may have about colour or the theory of colours, this doesn’t actually lead to the production of something successful and instead one has to practice to be able to achieve the best result. “It [the book] reverses this order and places practice before theory, which, after all, is the conclusion of practice.” 

This led to me considering colour more seriously in my second draft. My storyboard stayed similar, I just wanted to try out a few different scenes. Using the same story meant that I was still interpreting the song in a way where my character is drowning in their own thought/problems, but through the help and support of others, we can overcome our issues. This then meant that I was going to stick with using the colour blue for the ocean, however this time I added various tones of blue. It is believed that dark shades of blue represent a sense of sadness, whereas light shades of blue give a sense of refreshment, calmness, and tranquility. In Wassily Kandinsky’s basic colour theory, he states that blue is a peaceful and deep colour and the lighter/closer the colour blue gets to white, the more calming it becomes. I used this knowledge to create different layers in my storyboard using various tones of blue. Furthermore, I decided to start off my storyboard using darker shades of blue, but while the story continued the shade would slowly turn lighter, representing the optimism in the story. 

This time I thought it was important for me to focus on complementary colours. Blue and orange are placed opposite each other on the colour wheel, which creates a high amount of contrast. Using complementary colours could even be compared to music, as they harmonise together and are therefore meant to be used in this combination. “We almost never see a single colour unconnected and unrelated to other colours” (Interaction of colour, p4). It’s important to see how colours interact with each other and how they are present as a pair because it’s possible to create an attention grabbing image by simply picking the correct colours. Using the colour orange was also suitable for my characters, due to orange representing warmth and a fun atmosphere because the colour is energetic and creates a sense of warmth without necessarily associating danger like the colour red could. In my storyboard, one of my characters is there to support my other character, so being able to represent this in terms of sympathy, understanding and energy is very suitable.

Furthermore, I decided to connect my storyboard closer to the song by selecting specific lines from the song in relation to each panel. This can be seen below. 

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Alexander Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist. His work is believed to be influenced by synesthesia. Synaesthesia is a condition where a certain sense may trigger another sense, such associating the number 5 with the colour green. Many even consider Scriabin to be the leading Russian Symbolist composer.

Although his works may be considered to be influenced by synesthesia, few people actually believe he experienced this condition himself. He is doubted due to his colour system corresponding to the circle of fifths, whereas it doesn’t for most people who experience synesthesia.

Nevertheless, in his performances, he would use light and colour as well as sound. One of his symphonies called “Prometheus: The Poem of Fire”, includes a part for a machine known as ‘Luce’ (Italian for “light”), which is a colour organ. Although it is played like a piano, rather than producing sound, it projects coloured light through the room.

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter and theorist and many believe him to have experienced synesthesia. He has studied colour theory and gives an insight in his books on how he believes colours interact with each other as well as having produced a book of linked poems and woodcuts called “Klänge” (Sounds). He wrote multiple play scripts with titles like “The Yellow Sound”, or “The Green Sound” etc. These were intriguing experiments that blend words, colour, and music into one and the same. He describes his experience of painting using a musical metaphor: “I had little thought for houses and trees, drawing coloured lines and blobs on the canvas with my palette knife, and making them sing just as powerfully as I knew how.”

Colm Kelleher – What is colour?

In this TED talk, Kelleher briefly describes what colour is by thinking of light as a wave. If light is seen as waves, it should have a frequency. Colour is simply a name for the frequency of the light that our eyes detect. Colour is a measure of how quickly the light waves are moving.

If our eyes were quick enough we would be able to observe this periodic motion directly, but the frequency of the light is so high it waves up and down over 400million times per second. Therefore, we can’t see it as a wave but we can tell what its frequency is by looking at its colour.

Red       -> is the lowest frequency of light we can see

Purple  -> is the highest frequency of light we can see

In-between all the other frequencies form a continuous band of colour called the ‘Visible Spectrum’. The sun emits all colours of light, so light of all colours hit each object. For example, a blueberry looks blue because it reflects blue light more than the other colours. The colours yellow, purple and red get absorbed and the energy they are carrying gets turned into heat. White objects reflect all colours of light, whereas black objects do exactly the opposite and absorb at all frequencies. 

This was a conversation held between illustrators, authors, and directors in which innovative approaches to visual storytelling were explored to provide new perspectives on sensitive issues. They were expanding on the themes of House of Illustration’s current exhibition, “Journeys Drawn: Illustration from the Refugee Crisis,” in which the panel considered how illustration can help us connect with difficult and politically charged topics like the refugee crisis.

“Journeys Drawn” is the first UK exhibition to explore the refugee crisis through illustration. Illustrators are placed at an advantage over fine artists, as they are already used to working with stories and narratives, and most refugees’ stories are about moving, traveling and going on a journey through fleeing one place and arriving in another. The exhibition includes 40 multimedia works that range from being childlike picture-books to stark political cartoons. Some of them include a vast amount of written work, for example, Oliver Kugler’s work which incorporates the refugee’s own words and illustrations of their key objects and belongings in the same piece, whereas others convey emotion simply through imagery itself.

Asia Alfasi is a Libyan-British manga-influenced comic writer and artist who aims to represent the voice of the Muslim Arab. Her works synthesise Islamic, Lydian, British and Japanese influences. Manga is a suitable style to have been used in this instance, as it started when Japan was at its weakest, similar to the stories being depicted. A reason for manga becoming more popular during this time was because through this style artists were able to explore serious concepts and stories without the readers getting too close to reality, and they also had a chance to incorporate humour. 

In this particular comic a young refugee returns to her destroyed childhood home. She is haunted by memories but finds hope when she sees children playing among the rubble. Asia felt it was important to create a story in which people are able to explore hope after discovering decay and distraction. I also found it interesting how she prefers to work in black and white because she believes colour can take away from the detail and emotion being displayed. Furthermore, her comics are created using pure imagery. There’s an instance in which one of the girls watches her village and people burn down, but the panel the readers see is that of a crying girl with the reflection of fire in her eyes. Asia’s illustrations are able to speak for themselves without any dialogue whatsoever, through exploring the power of visual imagery to narrate without the help of words.

The following video I found to be the most moving of all. It uses a format called ‘zoom comic’ in which the picture is continually zooming in on the central image to open up the next scene. It was inspired by the testimonies of four Eritrean refugees who fled their homes to make the dangerous journey across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Libya to Europe. 

“North Star Fading” – PositiveNegatives Org

 

P1 – In visual perception, a colour is almost never seen as it really is – as it physically is. 

This fact makes colour the most relative medium in art.

 

P2 – Just as the knowledge of acoustics does not make one musical – neither on the productive nor on the appreciative side – so no colour system by itself can develop one’s sensitivity for colour.

This is parallel to the recognition that no theory of composition by itself leads to the production of music, or art. 

 

P3 – Colour recollection – visual memory 

If one says “Red” (the name of a colour) and there are 50 people listening, 

It can be expected that there will be 50 reds in their minds. 

And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.

Even when a certain colour is specified which all listeners have seen innumerable times – such as the red of the Coca-Cola signs which is the same red all over the country – they will still think of many different reds. 

First, it is hard, if not impossible, to remember distinct colours.

This underscores the important fact that the visual memory is very poor in comparison with our auditory memory. Often the latter is able to repeat a melody heard only once or twice.

Second, the nomenclature [a system of names] of colour is most inadequate.

Though there are innumerable colours – shades and tones – in daily vocabulary, there are only about 30 colour names. 

 

P 4 Colour reading and contexture 

In writing, a knowledge of spelling has nothing to do with an understanding of poetry. 

Equally, a factual identification of colours within a given painting has nothing to do with a sensitive seeing

Nor with an understanding of the colour action within the painting. 

Our concern is the interaction of colour: that is, seeing

What happens between colours 

We are able to hear a single tone. 

But we almost never (that is, without special devices) see a single colour unconnected and unrelated to other colours.

Colours present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbours and changing conditions. 

As a consequence, this proves for the reading of colour what Kandinsky often demanded for the reading of art:

What counts is not the what but the how. 

 

P 45 Film colour and volume colour – two natural effects 

Usually, we think of an apple as being red. 

This is not the same red as that of a cherry or tomato.

A lemon is yellow and an orange is like its name. 

Bricks vary from beige to yellow to orange, 

And from ochre to brown to deep violet. 

Foliage appears in innumerable shades of green. 

In all these cases the colours names are surface colours.

For a very different colour effect compare the coffee in a cup with the coffee in the stem of a percolator or with the coffee in a silex glass. 

It is easy to discover that, although all 3 containers hold the same coffee, the containers show this coffee in 3 different browns:

Lightest in the stem, darker in the cup, darkest in the silex glass. 

For the next workshop, we printed a rescaled version of our character that we created in the “Fears” workshop. We were then given a playlist to listen to called “Jukebox Jive” and were asked to listen to a number of songs before selecting one from which we use the words and story being told in the song to develop a narrative. These are examples of some of the songs I listened to: There’s a thin line between love and hate by The Persuaders, Little Bird by Annie Lennox and Big Time by Peter Gabriel. I ended up choosing the song Beautiful People with Beautiful Problems by Lana Del Ray. As I wasn’t pleased with the way my monster turned out I was able to interpret the title of the song so that I wouldn’t literally have to use my monster. The title “Beautiful People with Beautiful Problems” insinuates that no matter how beautiful you may look on the outside, everyone has flaws and issues hiding on the inside.

The song, by Lana Del Ray, explores the value of artists and rejecting consumerism. Beautiful people with beautiful problems is a song about surrounding yourself with people who put their art and love first and they are doing this for the right reasons, not just for money. It’s about being able to rise above your problems and having hope left that will get you through the issues.

I decided to interpret this song through a metaphor of someone drowning in their thought and problems. I’ve illustrated that everyone has dilemmas and troubles that they have to deal with individually, however, through the hold and support of others we are able to overcome them. The title of the song made me illustrate actual characters instead of using my monster as a literal character because this further emphasizes that although everyone has fears or issues these aren’t visible on the outside.

Once we picked our song, we used the 6-box template that was provided to create a storyboard for our narrative using only 3 colours. This was my first attempt. 

I wasn’t particularly pleased with the way my monster from the “Fears” workshop turned out. Initially, I considered restarting the whole figure in an attempt to improve it, but then I started thinking of different ways to reconstruct the monster. I don’t make 3D work very often, so I figured this could be an interesting start. I had also recently been at a bookbinding induction which led me to the idea of creating a small book that lets you create your own monster. 

I cut and sewed everything in the book together, including the cover, by using different colours of felt and a few accessories. Once you open the book there’s a pocket on the inside which includes materials, such as felt, pom poms, bright coloured stems and wiggly eyes, that can be used to cut, stick and/or sew to make a little monster. On the other side of the pocket, I added a few ideas of monsters that could be made. It was created with a young target audience in mind, around the age of 5.

While creating the book I then also decided to try out making monsters myself. These are some examples I came up with. 

 

After being briefed on the new project “Hand and Eye”, we started the first workshop which was based on our fears. Working in pairs, we attached 3 sheets of A1 paper together so that our partner could draw a life-sized outline of our body onto the sheets. We then had just over an hour to completely fill the inside of the outline with drawings and/or collages that relate to the word ‘fear’. This ‘monster’ that we then created reflects everyone’s individual personality and will be used in the next part of our project as a character for a narrative. 

My fears:

• Claustrophobia
• Forrest
• Natural Disasters
• Global warming
• Blushing
• Time (for example the fear of time running out or having to make the most out of every moment of time)