group crit

Before the group crit on monday I didn't like any of my roughs, I thought certain elements of them were useable but overall I was not happy with any of them. The crit helped me focus on the pisitive aspects of my roughs and discsrd the negative. With the help of the group feedback I have decided to further explore 2 of my ideas, one of my roughs and a digital rough i made over the weekend. I had become too focussed on communicating every element of the book which was proving to be a constraint on my work with negative effects. I want to create a sublety of communication that is relevent to the brief without using obvious cliched imagery and ideas.

 This is the first design i chose. I would like to use photography to create the front cover, to do this i will need to photograph on site in a tatto shop. the idea is to get kitchen roll that has been used to clean a tattoo that is in progress. The kitchen roll will have a mix of ink and blood on it with colours beeeding into each other. I will push this kitchen roll onto a white background so that the colour runs down the surface. I have already gone over the health and safety issues with a tattoo artist and this process should  not be a problem. During the crit it was suggested i could use the same stained kitchen roll as a background for the back cover of the book, I think this will baclance the cover and create a link between the front and back covers. I want to experiment with different media find the best way to draw the russian doll for the back cover. i want to find a way to create fades and bleeds that tie into the backdrop while making the image standout. Although the kitchen roll is not the most well known way to illustrate tattooing i think as an image it will be interesting to the viewer, draw the eye and generate a reaction.

This design is a digital rough I made when i was feeling really negative about the brief. I was struggling with my other concepts and wanted to change to a completely different thought process and aesthetic. I drew 2 hand with fine liner witht he idea to have them all overlapping making an image resembling a repetative pattern, I added the bars as a way to suggest the idea of imprisonment. I tried to use colours that suggest a sombre dull enviroment but that are still interesting, visually appealing image. I thought about using colours associtaed with russia (red,white,black) but decided they would alter the feel of the image and felt like a forced attempt to fulfill the criteria. I was originally intending to add tattoos to every arm in the image however after the feedback i recieved in the crit I think it would be better to only have a few of the arms tattooed. I will need to experiment to see how the addition of these images alters the image, I want to maintain the inetgrity of the structures that are already in the image/pattern. When choosing the tattoo designs i will need to be careful to select images that are appropriate to the subject, again i need to use sublety to suggest the the subject of russin prisons while avoiding imagery that seems too blatant or forced such as the hammer and sickle.