A Self Criticism

It has been 3 and half months since my last post, and pretty much the same amount of time has elapsed since I last looked at this project. There are a variety of reasons for this. But regardless, I am hoping the distance with give me some much needed perspective, so that I can look at the current images with less of a sense of preciousness. So here is a very long evaluation of the work so far:

I’ve been going through the entire project and, rather than making excuses for it, I’m highlighting the issues which need to be changed. Despite liking many of the ideas/words/images, many are going to need to be amended, edited, or deleted altogether. They still exist, and can be used in a portfolio – but if they don’t work in the book, I need to be ruthless and get rid of them. I am putting money into this project, it is my FIRST book after all, and I want it to be the best I can produce. It is a portrayal of me and my illustrative work and I want to be able to be proud of it.

Firstly, I need to seriously re-consider some of the ideas in the book. The purple objects denoting the person who is gone are very telling of who it is. And as readers, we will be looking for clues to work out who that is. However, I originally wanted to keep it reasonably ambiguous, so that different readers who had lost love ones could all relate to it. But I think this confuses matters. Looking at other books on death, such as:

They each tell a different story where people are dealing with someone dieing and trying to cope with it. There are different stories, different characters and the tell a specific tale. The reader is still able to relate to the situation, the feelings the characters portray, the situations they find themselves in, and they are still able to find some form of comfort from them – by knowing that they are not alone in these feelings, by putting this horrific happening into some sort of narrative context, and for a while at least, escaping into a fictional world.

From this I’ve realised I need to stick to certain characters and a certain back story for my poem. In the back of my head I’ve always thought it was about two siblings (probably two sisters as I have a sister – especially as I’ve been using photos of us as children as my main sources – although this does seem a bit of a morose thing to be writing about. I have never lost a sister, and the idea of loosing mine is obviously horrific, I’m not sure if it is completely distasteful to base a book on the idea of it. Maybe Freud would have a lot to say about this is regards to sibling rivalry… Anyway, hopefully having a little bit of a back story will help in creating the ideas for the images, eg. empty bed, place setting, grandpa's empty knee, marks on the wall, swinging together - suggest the loss of a sibling, probably female.

Secondly, when looking at some of the ideas I have been using, some of them need re-working. Whilst studying creative writing on my degree we were advised to always use CONCRETE images to describe ABSTRACT concepts. For example, if someone is feeling embarrassed rather than saying “Julie felt embarrassed by what Mel said about her” you would say, “Julie’s cheeks flamed deep peach pink at Mel’s sudden exclamation”. Not only does it become more descriptive and real to the reader, if I stick to concrete images about what it is like to miss and remember a loved one, it will be much less confusing. Some of the images are a little too fantastical, for example, the empty hand is purple – putting a purple glove on the girls hand makes it a more believable image. And some of the text does not lend themselves to concrete images, e.g:

Yellow is a sudden smile, and awful burst of laughter,

Yellow is bananas and custard, and feeling sick after

- I am hoping to cut these lines and come up with some new text.

Thirdly, I’m not sure if I would like the book to be a bit bigger. The majority of children’s books are larger, and one of the reasons I chose this size was due to price. I want the size to suggest this is a special book specifically for children – but then I do also want to encourage interaction between adult and child – something to think about! Dimensions I will keep the same, so size can be looked at later.

Finally, in terms of images, I think I will re-do all of them with the followings idea in mind:

• To stick to ONE way of working, one process, so that the images are similar in terms of light/dark and there is a fluidity in the book. I have really enjoyed all the experimentation, and I can always use different ways of working in other projects, but I am considering to sticking to one technique, probably similar to the yolk/sock/cold images.
• This will hopefully lead to less use of photoshop
• To keep the images as clear as possible (there have been issues with the photography which has led images to become a bit blurred and low quality)
• I will stick to two types of text – swirly, joined up writing, and the more blocked individual letters
• The purple and yellow need to be CLEAR – hopefully I can make all the purple objects have small yellow stars to make the idea more obvious.

So lots of things to look at and amend! I have a lot to do…

Final amends

Before I move on to new images, here is the amended version of the daffodil image - with the small purple-ish mound of earth to root the daffodils into the picture (rather than leaving them floating) and the head shape made more purple with photoshop. The only thing to add (if necessary) is the stars around the purple head.

Newly amended image

Right then, the 'Yellow Drink' image is re-drawn. I am much more pleased with it than the original drawing, a little bit of effort goes a long way.

Original:

New:

Much more realistic and delicate.

And the finished image, photographed on the lightbox, with cut out lettering, sized, lightened and purple added in...

Unfortunately, this technique looses a lot of the original detail, but at least an atmospheric feel is created. Adding in the purple and stars still needs a bit of work - trying to add in the fantastical element without it looking a little too odd.

Yellow drink image

Before I move onto new images, I am going through to make amendments to the current ones, so that I am a bit happier with them. (Hence the playing around with purples).

I've begun to re-draw the "yellow drink" image, as the girl's face was pretty hideous...

And there were a number of problems with the drawing. Instead, I've used an old photo of my sister, flipped around, to create a more realistic image...

Although it is frowned upon to work from photos, I don't have a huge amount of contact with children to use as models, and I actually quite like my personal attachment to these photos of my and my sister's childhood - they hopefully add a sense of nostalgia and depth (at least, to me they do!)

One of the problems I have at the moment is that, going straight into the illustrating, I didn't think about the character's in the images. As I wanted an ambiguous, poetic feeling, I don't have an exact back story to the book, and so haven't created a central character, so the children (all girls) in the images are all quite different, which will probably cause further confusion for the reader. So, I've made the decision to try to use photos of my sister as much as possible throughout the book - to try to add to the continuity.

Anyway, I'm currently much more pleased with the re-drawing, which I think has more sensitivity to the scene...

I still need to add the colour (in this instance using pencil crayons), but I do like the simplicity of the pencil lines and simple tones of light through the paper. I have ideas to concentrate (after this first project) to create more adult illustrations with more muted tones, perhaps to illustrate poetry, going back to some of the first images I made such as this one:

Swing image

And after a little bit more playing, here is the "purple enhanced" swing image...

More photoshop experiments

Managed to pick up the photoshop-brush today - finally. Just a quick bit of playing around to the sand image, using the yellow-er original image and adding my chosen purple using different sized and different levels of transparency brushes to try to make the purple areas stand out as much as possible and link with the other pages.

Anyway, here is the finished result...

I'm still not convinced about it - and I really need to see how all of these images look once printed, as on screen and print vary to such a degree, especially with these photographic and digitally manipulated images.

New Purple

Things are getting off to a sloooow re-start. But to begin, I am trying to solve the "purple" problem. That is, am trying to get some consistency with the purple in each image, and making it stand out within the illustrations. So using photoshop, I've selected the correct area, and painted over with a selected purple, keeping a degree of transparency so that the textures and luminosity of the images is retained.

As you can see in these exciting before and after shots!

Before...

And after...

Before...

And after...

It may not seem to make a huge amount of difference, but I am hoping it now looks more purple, and if added to all the images - may add a degree of continuity and flow between the pages, fingers crossed!