an update

Ok so Rachel has left for South Africa and has been away for over a week now. I've just come back from Venice which basically took away my half-term, can't figure out if it was worth it, but I do know I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have done.

Tired right now so I won't be getting into detail about my half-term in this post... maybe some other time. After getting back I've just been trying out a few things with recent and old pieces of work, none of which I can say are finished except this one here.

First digital painting to be made.

Reference: Squall, Final Fantasy VIII

chromatic fantasy

Finally! I've actually finished a good piece before the deadline, I'm pleased as fuck. But as I know myself I'll probably wake up tomorrow morning hating every bit of it, so while I'm still chuft I thought I'd make a post for it :).

Chromatic Fantasy is the title I've given for this outcome, mainly because I personally think it sounds cool, and secondly, the piece is of a fantasy (or at least an event of a fantasy-like atmosphere) obviously. I call it the Chromatic Fantasy cuz' I like the irony of the title that's there to represent the mono-chrome piece with very little colour.

Ah... since I'm too tired to be writing anything else about it, heres my statement of intent, or project brief.


Fractured Fairy Tales
In accordance to the ‘Fractured Fairy tales’ theme chosen for my pathway project, I will illustrate a fantasy scene which involves modern objects, or partial areas, in a concept piece. My aim is to convey what originally constituted the typical fairytale, before being progressively modified and adapted to become suitable for the younger generation of today. To achieve this, I will create concepts of fantasy within the modern world using everyday features as the scenario, but I will create a much darker and more mysterious atmosphere. It will be based upon a quest as this is most often the central theme running throughout both original fairytales and the recent updated versions.

Influences, Research, Sources and Ideas
To portray my ideas I am going to elucidate a scene from a traditional story that will be shown through a modern reality, produced across a set of three pieces. Each piece will include a number of objects that symbolise quest items, as these are key elements in most fairy tales. Examples of such items include: stairs, keys and doors to hidden passage ways, all of which are to be illustrated within an urban environment. Having already watched ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and ‘The Company of Wolves’, I have been influenced by the idea of having reality and fantasy alongside each other, which is where my fairy tale situation taking place in a half modern environment derives from. Other influences of fantasy concepts are from the works of Viktor Antonov, Kristin Oftedal who uses a series of techniques I take interest in and the location designs from ‘Final Fantasy VIII‘, an extraordinary game with many great designs (again having fantasy in a real life environment), based on a believable logical world presumably set in a parallel universe.

Techniques, Processes and Media
I intend to use photography and observational drawing to create a series of imagery that will depict a fairy tale-like story. I will use location and aspects of modern life to represent objects that can be considered as quest items. I will use a selection of mixed media - pencil, digital colours and cropped subjects from photographs. My technique will be applying colours or tone to scanned drawings and placing them aside cropped imagery. Some editing alterations will be made on each element to bring all aspects together. The resulting image or images I am aiming to produce will have a taste of uncertainty of what’s going on, with the intention of creating a mysterious atmosphere, although character (body) expression or certain objects will confirm the situation, I am considering captions for each piece to show narrative but this will depend on the end result.

Method of Evaluation
I will evaluate my work thoroughly stating pros and cons, enhancing or developing experimental practice and giving reasons for the methods I will use. To ensure my ideas are illustrated and portrayed correctly I will carry out a small survey, using a questionnaire, asking people to comment on what is being viewed and which known fairytale the illustrations may relate to. Also, I will be asking friends (alongside self-criticism) to comment on any flaws in my work so that I can come up with alternative designs, but remain close to what I intend to illustrate.

reach your goals?

Straight out of boredom. Sat in front of a screen drinking coffee, I made this.
It's tacky but w'hey, I made use of a very badly drawn figure I did on Corel Painter.

Merged many photographs & scanned paint splatters +

Drew the figure in Corel Painter (Reference: Photograph of Adnan Kamenica xd) +

Contrast, Levels, Curves, Rubbing out crap bits and what not +

Contemplated what to have typed on the piece. Reach your goals? that'll do.

rballam

Here is a piece where I have experimented a process never tried before and found the result satisfying, hopefully this technique will be used in many more future work.

I used a photo of my wonderful girlfriend to produce this piece. :)

Equipment
3b pencil
Photoshop CS

Wacom Intuos 3

Pencil observation + applied digital colour