Change of Plan

I have had trouble getting into this project over the Christmas break and have decided to change the theme of my book. I lost my mum just after Christmas last year and want to base the book on her. I have been trying to think of a way to shape this idea to create a good book and to meet the brief. i think I would like to base the book around her life and this would enable me to research to locations and story's associated with it.

I have spent the last 2 weeks interviewing family members and friends of the family to find out how I could best sum up important events in her life and what locations I could research. During this research i have highlighted moments that sum up her life that I think are universal enough to appeal to the readers of the book and that should be possible to illustrate without words.

I want the book to convey the joys of her life and the sadness of her death so I need to try out different ways of illustrating the book that are fitting to the tone of the subject matter. I have been struggling with this aspect as I mostly draw cartoon like illustrations that aren't necessarily right for the emotions I want to convey. I have been drawing facial expressions to try and get a grip of how to show emotions with a degree of subtlety while still clearly illustrating each part of the story.

I have been collecting story's from my family and family friends that have meant I could put together a rough idea of how i want to put the book together in regards to structure and page layout but i need to do more research into each individual story and location. the story's I have chosen to start this process are

1. I want to start with my mums childhood in hackenthorpe in sheffield. my grandad had a very tough young life, he was the youngest of 12 brothers and had a toe missing on each foot from wearing handed down shoes that were too small for him. he was put into a sanitorium when he was a child because he was mal nourished. He went to war as a teenager and came back strong and healthy. He moved into a council house which he loved as he had a garden to grow his own veg. I want to show my mum with my grandma and grandad in the garden harvesting veg.

2. My grandad worked in  the steel mills in sheffield as a brick layer building furnaces in sweltering conditions. he worked in terribel conditions to provide for his family and to pay for my mum to be able to go to a good school. She went to notre dame and the uniform cost a lot of money at the time. It was a culture clash for my mum and must have been very difficult to adjust to her new surroundings. I want to try and illustrate this feeling of apprehension she must have felt arriving on the first day.

3. After going to notre dame she moved to london to study and work but hated the city. She loved the outdoors and used to get on a bus for 3 hours to get out into the countryside whenever possible. I want to show the anxiety she must have felt in the busy city and the serenity that escaping to the country must have brought.

4. She met my dad in london and they were together until she died i want to show their wedding as a celebration of that connection and how huge a part of her life it was.

5 I want illustrate my sister being born and then me a few years after. he was a teacher and a mother and was loved by her staudents and her children. I have never seen students react that way to a teacher in the schools i went to. She never gave up on anyone and I want to try and show how caring she was. Although these ideas are very personal to me I think people will be able to associate members of their families to the book if I illustrate it correctly. I need to highlight common situations that people have either experienced themselves or are familir enough with the make an emotional connection to them.

6. I would like to show the doctor giving my mum the news that she was ill and only had a year to live. this is obviously a very emotional part of the book for me and i need to make sure i can convey that emotion to the viewer and do it in a way that demonstrates the situation as clearly as possible. the situation is fairly simple it is the feelings of the characters i need to concentrate on. I have been struggling to get emotion right drawing facial expressions so will need to work on this by researching other illustrators work and trying different styles and media.

7. While my mum was ill and undergoing chemotherapy my sister had a daughter, my mums first grandchild and this was an amazing blessing in the final moths of her life. i want to show the joy and how important family is in times of sadness. Even though the last year of my mums life was extremely difficult I am grateful we had the time we had and that she got to see and enjoy the company of her grandchild. I want this to be a happy illustration but still illustrate the effect the illness and therapy is having on my mum. This will be a struggle to balance the complex emotion of this section of the book.

8. I want to show me and my sister and dad at my mums bedside the night she died. It is a very dark sad part of the story but think it is needed to show the realities of the situation and of life itself. I think that this could be very close to a lot of peoples emotions and be a very powerful image.

9. finally i want to find a way to show how my mum still inspires me in everything I do and the memory of her makes me stronger in times of trouble even in writing this book. In essence this is a book of me being inspired to illustrate this book.

Meanwood Towers Photos 2

 I got some close up shots of the doorway and balcony on the front of the building which both have some really nice detail i could use in my picture book. I want to illustrate the building a few differnet times throughout the book each time in a different way. I think the drawing of the original building as it looked years ago could be in black and white maybe with a colour backdrop. I also want to draw the building as a silhouette with the flats visible inside to show the modern living and stories of the residents. my friend lives on the top floor so I was thinking I could depict him as the lord of the house and contrast his lifestyle with the original owner. 

I need to take a trip to St Bartholimew's in Armley to look at the organ and figure out how to show its influence on the building, this opens up lots of possibilities to add a new angle to the picture book both in concept an layout. 

 I tried out a quick idea to colour the building with sold grey tones with no shading or highlights. I like the effect it creates especially against a colourful background and would like to try this with a completed illustration of the building. 

If I am going to compare modern living in the house with the original owner I need to do more research into life at the time and try to discover any similarities.

meanwood Towers photos

 this is a photo of meanwood towers taken in 1950 before the chimenys had been removed for saftery reasons, Apart form the chimneys the building remains intact with all its original features although it has been turned into flats. I would like to show the changes that have taken place over the years, especially the building surroundings and residents.

 This is a photo I took on Friday showing the building with the chimneys missing and its new residential surroundings. The buildings gothic designs is enhanced by the plain modern building that surround it. The building is tucked away on a dead end street away from the main road adding to its horror movie mystique.

I decided to make a quick digital rough of the chimneys that have been removed shown as a ghostly presence on the roof of the building. I would like to tell the story of the building and its inhabitants changing over time. I have a friend that lives in Meanwood Towers on the top floor so I will gon and take some photos and interview him.

Chosen location

The location I have chosen for this project is Meanwood Towers which was formerly known as Meanwood House and was built in 1866-67.The house was designed by Edward Welby Pugin and is in victorian gothic style.The owner of the house Thomas Stuart Kennedy commissioned Edmund Schulze to build an pipe organ for the house that was installed in 1869. The house featured an 800 seater wooden concert hall. The organ only stayed at the house for 8 years and was loaned to St Peters church in Harrogate for 2 years before being sold and given to Bartholomew's Church in Armley where it still resides today. The house used to have tall chimneys fitting wight eh style of the rest of the house but they were removed in 1969 for safety reasons. The house is now made up of flats although a lot of its original feature remain including a grand marble staircase. 

I want to tell the story of this house an how it has changed over time, including what it is like to live there now. I know someone who has lived in a flat in the building for 8 years so i will interview him about what his view of this building is and try to find out the more subtle personal things about living in  a piece of history. I will get him to show me round and take photos of both he exterior and interior. I will also keep researching the building and surrounding area. 

Mark Making 2

 For this piece I used a plastic nib paint pen hat works like a fountain pen on water colour paper. I have used these pens before and on certain surfaces the can spatter if used at a certain angle, if done right this can be a really nice effect and add some texture and movement to a drawing. I think the water and some of the shadows on the tentacles work well but I need to change the composition exaggerate the movement. I wanted the water to look like photographs of water taken with a fast shutter speed.i would like to work on a more detailed larger scale version of this piece.

This set of three images follows on from thew previous visual language task, I was truing to draw a version of a cat griffin type creature and struggles with anatomy of the cat. I wanted to work more on this and try to understand how to put together a character that even if not entirely anatomically correct, looked right! I Tried to use a combination a marks to communicate speed, movement and form. The spots on the cheetah really help show the solid form of the cheetah among the lines i have added to show its movement. Before I added the spots and shading the form was partially lost or confused within the composition.

For this next image i tried to redraw the cheetah vert quickly using loose layered lines. I realised that the shape i had created looked a lot more like a dog than a cheetah so stuck with it and added a couple of details to add to the character. I work a lot by building up lives into solid blocks so in this image i tried to use dingle pen strokes to show the contours of the form of the dog. I think the single lines work well but would be more effective if combined with a neater more detailed outline.

For the final drawing of the set I decided to switch to sold almost geometric lines. The image reminds me of old adverts for dog racing you would see in bookies years ago. I think the lines are too simple, uniform or even just too short to show any effective movement. I would like to try this again with a range of colours.I think that would open up opportunities to create and interesting form as well as movement.

This last image was lots of fun, it is a sharkgorillagoat? maybe? something like that. I like using copics markers and fin liner as a combination but I usually use them in a more more practiced,neat regimented way. I tend to use solid outlines in fin liner with multiple tones of copics to make blocks of shadow. This was an interesting experiment that I would like to follow up on with more thought put into composition and colour. I think an illustration with the darkest shadow made up of marker then combined with subtle tones of colics could be really nice.

Mark Making

I should have made this blog post a few weeks ago when I made these images but I forgot. This does offer me a chance to look back at the drawings with a fresh perspective. I think a couple of these images although created as mark making would fit better in the shape task, I was trying out different ways to use fine liners, paint markers and copics and found myself drawing in blocks of solid black with no outline.

I decided to keep working on the theme of mythical creatures by making up my own using combinations of animals. I like working with block shapes and bold contrasts between light and dark. I found that the more you remover the detail and concentrate your mark making purely on shadow the better the images looked. The solid black on the Gorillacrow is interesting and i think would look good in combination with good use of negative space. I think i need to try out more media to see what different textures and marks i can achieve.