Assignment 2 – POS Display

Ideas

Farms – where veg is grown organically by hansom farmers and their smiling wives and children amidst contented livestock and pretty farm buildings. Sunshine essential

Sunshine – essential for ripening

Characatures/Personifications – engaging with people by using character to draw them in

Positive and Negative effects of VEG on people…

Postitive:

• Fresh
• Varied
• Flavoursome
• Crunchy
• Nice texture in mouth
• Colourful
• Solid
• Dependable
• Healthy – Brownie points from your doctor

Negative:

• Complicated prices – hard to buy
• Not always in packs – not easy to take off the shelf
• Needs preparation – which needs knowledge of preparation
• Need to pre-wash to get rid of pesticides
• Rots
• Allergies
• They’re not biscuits (which are Sooooo easy to snack on)
• Unpredictable lifespan and ripeness moments
• Forced to eat them as a child
• Onions make you cry
• People complain when given veg they dislike (esp your own children)

Ideas from these… present so that it looks easy to buy and eat: a single piece or a definite number (like 2 onions or 4 baking potatoes) as if picked and almost packed for you. Include faces of people smiling at the veg.

Brief says Fruit or Veg – so both are included, which makes it easier… and harder too.

List of Fruit and Veg appropriate to each season:

Autumn (Sep, Oct, Nov) from http://greatgrubclub.com/in-season#.VeGvLNNVhHw

• apple
• blackberry
• butternut squash
• Brussels sprouts
• cabbage (savoy and spring green)
• carrot
• cauliflower
• celery
• kale
• leek
• onion
• parsnip
• pear
• potato
• pumpkin
• purple sprouting broccoli
• spinach
• turnip

Summer (June, July, August) from http://greatgrubclub.com/in-season#.VeGvLNNVhHw

• apple
• basil
• beans (runner and French)
• beetroot
• broccoli
• carrot
• cauliflower
• celery
• courgette
• cucumber
• fennel
• lettuce
• onion
• potato
• radish
• raspberry
• red onion
• rocket
• rhubarb
• strawberry

Where Am I

I’ve had a few false-progresses with this Assignment so I’m going back to the beginning to find out where I am and what I ned to do.

Where are my notes? The work that I do doesn’t stay in my head. I’ve got many pages of visual notes in my sketchbooks but I forget that they are there… I”ve started with Aubergine, Pumpkin, Strawberry, Watermelon and Celery. I haven’t kept up with putting that progress here, in my learning log, so I can’t see it! I’ll put that right in a moment.

Reading of the brief: I haven’t been carrying the right thing around in my head for the brief. There are certain tracks that the brief leads me on that I haven’t been anticipating. It actually requires an end artwork for each season, Summer and Autumn, but has an intermediate stage where an objective study of the veg is asked for. I’ve been confusing the two and thinking that the final artwork is somehow an objective work. I think this is my comprehension skills not fully connecting with the right side of my brain where a lot of the thinking happens. I need to pay more attention to that because I’m getting confused.

What to do: I’ve started to look at different media that can be used to represent the food. I need to collect some real-world illustrations to demonstrate some applied techniques. In my sketchbooks I’ve used ink and pencil to explore some examples. I need to try some watercolour as I feel like that will be good at showing a quality of the food that is appetizing (this is intuition – I don’t know why yet). I tried out producing food images in Illustrator

Watercolour

It turns out that I’ve already painted these veg in watercolours but I’d forgotten (I was pleasantly surprised to find them just hanging out to dry).

The aubergine did not come out as scrumptious-looking as I was hoping. I had thought that I’d be able to create soft transitions and even colour but my watercolour experience is not enough even to know if it is possible.

Ink and Pencil

I’ve experimented with drawing smaller sketches of these veg. The Aubergine in my drawing is rather pale compared to the real vegetable and this, strangely, increases its niceness on the page. It might just be that darker colours are harder to handle but it may also have to do with the colours of ‘bruises’ also being the darker colours so this may tend to influence the look.

These pictures I did, examining the way the vegetable is put together, really suffer from poor looks when I try to make them suitably dark. I had limited pens available to me so I tried to be creative with blues and browns but the whole veg is a mess. On the next page I tried using just one pen colour for each sketch creating darker areas by going over them in the same colour. This had amore pleasing effect even in Blue or Green which are nothing like the real colour of an Aubergine.

Comparing my pen and pencil sketches with these latest ones it is interesting how much ‘character’ is in the sketches done with a black fine-liner and coloured pencils. It is perhaps the case that the very nature of these coloured-in line drawings gives the viewer the deliberate message that these are ‘not real-looking’.

This is similar to the ‘Uncanny Vally’ – familiar to the making of Androids that look almost human, but not quite. Perhaps these drawings are far enough away from the life-like representation of their subject that the view no-longer needs to believe that they are life-like and can accept them as representations of very nice veg.

The same might be said of the pumpkin which, in watercolour, starts to look rather reasonable (maybe because we don’t expect ‘shine’?) but even so, the fine-liner and coloured pencil version seems to appeal more, even though it does not look more realistic. It is a representation of a very nice pieces of veg and I think our brains fill in the gaps to make it into the nice food that we wish to expect.

Objective or Subjective

These experiments have brought me to a new question about the final outcome of the illustration that I am aiming to produce for this assignment. Obviously I shall be attempting an illustration of accurate, objective quality for the intermediate stage of the assignment but for the final part I can take this in any direction.

The experiments above are starting to point very clearly towards a subjective illustration where the ‘Perfection’ of the produce is brought out at the expense of the objective reality of the work. All of the pointers and notions in the brief about food being ‘appetising’ and not putting people off would normally indicate to me that maximum realism is required (in fact, why not a really hi-res photograph?). But this is not the case.

Illustrator and Photoshop

Experimenting with creating the Aubergine image directly in Illustrator. Not being too concerned about the exact shape at this point but mainly wondering how shine is created and is the image realistic.

This one was created in Photoshop. The difference is how the highlights and lowlights are produced – using a brush rather than a vector shape. Using the benefits of Photoshop I was able to adjust the colour and levels of the three layers: Flat purple Aubergine flesh background; Highlights mask on curve; lowlights mask on curve. I was ignoring the green parts for this test.

Of all the illustrations of this particularly awkward produce that I’ve made so far this is the one that starts to look the most ‘photoreal’. One of the most awkward aspects of this vegetable is that the whole look is dependent on the reflections of the environment around it. Every window, light and shadowed area in the room contributes to those highlights and lowlites, including a discernible shape of me, the artist, when I’m drawing it. On the plus side this means that I could find a setting that shows it to its best. It’s a remarkable surface texture. Although it is highly mirror-like there is also a degree of diffussion – each tonal area is soft edged, limned with a feathered glow.

I n the Illustrator versions I like most the more graphic look without the soft edges or extra lowlights. I’m drawn to it because it tries not to be too fussy – my imagination makes it into a ‘perfect’ vegetable rather than my attempts at shading. The Photoshop version is much better for the shading results and could be even more objectively correct given a lot more time – I feel like the tools  to do this are there in the software.

None of the computer drawn illustrations approaches the friendliness of the fine-liner and coloured pencil sketches which seem to allude to something more ‘Organic’.

This was a quick attempt at a tomato in Illustrator. It was hampered by the method of using a gradient mesh which accentuated the grid shape of the mesh. Photoshop seems a better bet for this kind of shading work.

==== STOP PRESS ====

We interrupt this blog-cast to bring you breaking news… mass panic is spreading after a well-known supermarket chain declared that unless their customers buy more Aubergines by 13th February, innocent Aubergines would suffer.

This is the first time that terrorism has been enacted by this Supermarket chain who say they have been forced into this position by the underhand tactics of their competitors and the increasing disloyalty of their loyalty card holders. Many customers are now habitually carrying four or five loyalty cards as well as frequenting discount chains where they may purchase goods in an untraceable manner.

This latest escalation has been broadly condemned by at least the three traditional high street grocers that we managed to find for comment, who say they that “the 13th looks like it’s going to be unlucky for some” and are preparing themselves for a St Valentine’s Day massacre.

Stay tuned… Keep it fresh… we’ll bring you more news as we hear it

==== ENDS ====

…this thread is continued in Winter Aubergine and in the parallel post Winter Aubergine Commentary which two posts ought to be read ‘Face en Face’ to allow one to explain the other. 

The Winter Aubergine is a fictional scenario that I’ve created – I’m looking to use it as a device to carry my development to uncharted areas.

Drawing types…

• Forensic
• photographic evidence
• Good/Bad Carbon (Charcoal) footprint
• Courtroom – in the dock (leaves?)
• Placards
• Grafitti

Developing Big Eyes

Experimenting with the big eyed look – this works for what I’m trying to achieve which is a sense of ‘guilt’ for not buying the Aubergines.

 

trying out watercolour pencils to blend the Aubergine skin here.

Overall I’m very frustraed with watercolour… tubes or pencils… and I realise that I would need a good deal of experience with that medium to put this problem right. There always seems to be colour variances which I’m sure are to do with how I’m applying the water and using the brush but I can’t figure out what to change.

This is a bigger version of my original sketch

Just doodling with the aubergine I stumbled across a chance similarity between the top of the aubergine and the star of David which Jews were forced to wear  in Germany from sometime before WW2. Somehow this nails it – it makes the connection between the veg and the metaphor quite strongly. I might dispense with the correct colour for the ‘green top’ in order to shift the perspective towards the metaphore.

The remaiing problem is colour – I’v only be able to produce suitably clean colour on the computer so I’ll use a hand-drawn line image and add the colour using photoshop.

I developed the idea of a prison or concentration camp above with an over-sized aubergine plugging a hold in the fence. The theory is that by removing the aubergine (when a customer buys it) they open the breach for the prisoners to escape. This struck me as being either ‘Goodies’ (1970s/80s TV comedy) or computer game (a spin off for the supermarket to educate the children perhaps!).

I wondered about the use of colour for the whole thing… making the aubergine stand out. The purple colour is very useful for that as it is easy not to use purple anywhere else.

This final image was produces as a pencil sketch which was coloured in Photoshop. I’ve also added some texture to the striped shirt fabric.

Summer Strawberry

The strawberry’s tale has been harder to follow to a conclusion.

My thought has been to mirror current politics with the Nationalist movements wishing to exclude foreigners (aubergines in winter) and look towards a British Grown fruit – the Strawberry. This particular fruit is ideally suited to the Nationalist cause as it is Red (like the St George Cross), associated with Wimbledon and grown here in fields where signs proudly proclaim ‘Pick Your Own’. This phrase has the cynical reading of choosing your ‘own creed’. The whole thing falls neatly into the Nationalist camp… er… whilst being innocent strawberries.

I have had in mind to use Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange and Green for this – bright colours associated with summer (Blue sky, Orange/Yellow sun etc) which led on to looking at the Union Flag as a National Symbol, perhaps swapping out the colours slightly.

In nationalist terms the Union Flag is an interesting example… it still clearly represents the flags of the individual nations – England, Ireland (N) and Scotland. Wales is represented as combined with England’s St George Cross.

In keeping with the existing metaphore I’ve tried to see if the Strawberry will fit Nazi symbolism.

Swapping the blue parts of the Union Flag for triangular strawberries was interesting, but seemed a little weak visually. It could be developed to be stronger perhaps.

I’ve made a visual list here of some visually English National ideas – Roses, Churches, High Tea, Crown (Monarchy) and cucumber sandwiches (a favourite of Lady Penelope I believe).

Here I’m looking at the seeds on the surface (a particular peculiarity of this fruit) and how they might play a part in the symbolism.

Thinking here a little about our stereotyped idea of the kind of person who belongs to a Nationalist group – inherently xenophobic, perhaps looking presentable, perhaps not!

One quite strong idea here is to use the ‘Punnet’ – traditional container used to collect strawberries when picking your own – presented against an English summer backdrop. The Punnet is extremely useful place where suitable imagery can be presented. I’ve tried a Union Flag but the words ‘Pick your own’ would seem here to be in a harmless context whilst perhaps delivering their more cynical message to the initiated.

So then I come to the strawberries themselves… they seem now to be the least important part of the image so long as their are recognised as being strawberries that is enough.

This style of presentation – the elaborate visual story – seems to belong in the ere which inspired it. The 1930s-50s before photography really became a strong alternative to the illustration. Today supermarkets seems to just use huge photos of the fruit and veg – beautifully lit and without ornament. The strength of an illustration is to be able to simplify and show only the details that matter for the message without all of the distracting details. The extreme of this would be the graphic image.

Required Elements

I’ve discovered that a strawberry image requires some or all of the following:

• Red – the majority colour
• Green – stalk, enhances ‘freshness’ and opposes the red to make a vibrant image
• White – the skin is shiny and specular reflections look white; the interior of the fruit also has white areas
• Seeds – the characteristic pattern of ‘dots’ that covers the outside of the fruit.
• Shape – approximately heart-shaped, but some leeway as they vary in shape

To put this all in our required Nationalist context I’m going to use the punnet as a flag and slogan bearer. It can be brimming with strawberries and placed in front of an idyllic, English landscape… just add cream!

Here’s a sketch of a possible final layout. I discovered that the handle on a punnet (as I remember them!) can be coloured along with the top band of the container to look like a St George Cross. Adding a white liner helps make the background for this flag correct.

The backdrop to the punnet is an English countryside.

This was an experiment in creating an English landscape using watercolours. I have some idea how I need to do it but I definitely need a whole lot more experience with watercolours to get the kind of result I’m looking for.

These three pages represent exploration of the scene for the illustration – seeing how to present the view of the Punnet. The final choice is a low down view that gives the ‘flag’ a monumental look – bigger and and more ‘above’ and commanding.

It took me a while to understand how the specular highlight of the strawberry is actually rendered using pencils! It’s a bit like a chesterfield sofa.

I abandoned the Union Flag reluctantly – it looks really good in the picture but dilutes the specific appeal that I’m going for. I’m intending to sketch this in pencil and colour it in Photoshop and perhaps see if the pencil sketch can be turned off at the end. In this case I might be able to introduce some blue using the shadowed parts of the objects, and perhaps some ‘gold’ (orange/yellow) highlights from the sunlight which will be coming from the front and high up (like summer!).

Strawberry final artwork

I’ve started to colour the very lightly sketched line art for the final Summer Strawberry work.

When I came to make the first strawberry I discovered something about my use of Photoshop as compared to real-life media – I understand it a lot better! this was not obvious as I had often been frustrated with the limitations of having to use a mouse asa proxy. Drawing anything that looks ‘natural’ (ie: not computer graphic) is challenging. This time however, perhaps because I’ve studied strawberries in the course of this assignment, I found that I could work out what to do to get what I wanted.

This is my first strawberry. It probably didn’t have to be this detailed for this particular illustration but it has a number of properties that I personally couldn’t achieve using watercolour, pencils or similar…

• I can work on details by zooming in
• I can control the colour easily
• It’s quicker to experiment with colour variation
• Using layers I can adjust one aspect without affecting the others

Second strawberry:

With my second strawberry I’ve refined the method to make it simpler – the strawberries are small in the picture and might look better if they are described with more economy.

The seeds are not exactly correct as they are just the pits rather than the tine seeds in the pits. Other strawberry designs use a single mark for the seed and its pit – that’s enough for us to recognise and understand what is being represented.

So I think this might take a while… I should submit the assignment on the basis that this is the plan – it just needs completing.

This is a very rough idea of the finished picture. It reveals that I have some more thinging to do about the content of the image at the bottom – it’s a bit bland. Perhaps the whole thing can have a tighter crop? The ‘table’ might also need re-thinking about as it dominates the picture – the brown colour I’ve shosen here is over-powerful compared to the St George Cross which should be the dominating effect.

Lately this somewhat facist politicised image has taken on a new meaning WRT Brexit! It’s not just about British fruit now – in the current political context its meaning would be interpreted as being in favour of the ‘out’ campaign in the European referendum. A danger for a supermarket employing national imagery is that it could find itself unwittingly appearing to support one view that didn’t exist when the imagery was chosen. Another example of this is are the dozens of companies that based their business names on the river in their local area in Oxfordshire… the river Isis. Unfortunate that the word ‘Isis’ has much more recently become associated with the latest offshoots of Wahhabist movement and its most extreme activists.

Exercise: Choosing Content

Main Character: He is humourless and works all his waking hours will permit. He takes no pleasure for himself and works alone having given up idle conversation and ‘amusements’.His work is slow and paperbound so reading papers, taking notes and cross-referencing occupy all of his time to the exclusion of colleagues, friends or subordinates. His dealings with people are courtious and he speaks as a well-educated man.

Main Character Appearance: Middle-aged senior police officer. In war-time London he is dressed in a dark suit and plain or subtly patterned tie; wears a tie pin. His shirt will be white with cufflinks. He wears a hat (Fedora or Trilby. Also dark and plain) and a long rain coat out doors. He moves sparingly and his eyes are still and patient, his lips are thin and pale. His face is neither thin nor wide but he carries a few extra ‘middle-aged’ pounds on his middle. There may be a single crest or symbol about his person – perhaps on the tie pin, cufflinks or the tie itself. It will denote membership of a network of some kind – Alumni of a college perhaps. His shoes are black brogues; polished and smart but not new. Closer observation will reveal tension – he does not smile because of a clenched jaw; his hands ball into fists when idle; he occasionally holds his breath unthinkingly then releases it.

Room: Contains a desk and chair. There are two plain chairs against the wall opposite the desk against the possibility that a meeting might have to take place in the room. By the door is a coat stand where the occupant’s rain coat and hat reside while he is present. A “room in a shop window” is an empty space where the customers can walk into… you can only see so far through a shop window into the room beyond as the farthest corners are out of sight. Nevertheless it is plain to see that the room is empty… this one is ’emptier’: without merchandise.

Sunshine: it is day, the sun comes in. The windows are uncurtained so the sun shines in without being diffused – it carves extruded-window-shaped beams through the room. The “parallelogram of light” suggests that the building is not directly facing the sun – it is entering from the side causing the window-shape of sunlight to be non-rectangular on the floor.

The massive shadow that “passed to and fro” is curious and unexplained. Perhaps it is the shadow of a barrage balloon tethered high between the window and the sun that drifts causing the monumental shadow.

Because “war-time London lay beneath” he is on a higher floor… a good view, unobstructed.

In my mind of war-time London I imagine these windows to be tall and narrow… the ceiling also tall, an old building. Taller than the real Scotland Yard (Old, Great or New). The height of the ceiling increases the volume of the room and hence its emptiness… even more space with nothing in it.

The floor is not plain – an old building with old ideas about what is appropriate I imagine it to be lightly decorative, perhaps white tiles in squares with much smaller diamond/rhomboid/square tiles in the cut-away corners. Perhaps these small tiles are another colour – black, red or blue, but not vivid.

The desk is not as old as the building – it is plainer. Still made of wood and with built-in drawers, hardwood with a decoratively bevelled edge but more perfunctory and chosen for its large size – to serve the need of the paperwork… the photos… papers being laid out in arrangements in order to follow the trail of an incident in a visual manner… cross-referencing several sources at once.

Some of the more poetic and metaphorical references in the text speak to an overall atmosphere:

• derelict amusement park
• “islanded”
• creeping
• “bleak and functional” (of the sunshine – implies not warm)
• “Void and unquickened”
• “austerity” (a curious choice of word these days… but implies a choice to be frugal)
• “plate glass” (not just glass – plate like “armour plated”,like steel, a coldness)
• “uncurtained” (more straightforward indication of an emptiness… takes away any idea of fabric or soft edges in the room)

Exercise: Making a Moodboard

Start

I got stumped trying to start this exercise (Ho, ho, ho… no surprise there then, just like every other exercise on the course. Change the record!). In this case I saw a paradox… how do I collect materials together before I know what materials I am going to need… as this is a visual exploration rather than a planned collage. I became unstuck eventually by just starting (well that’s obvious) – I picked up a magazine and started looking through it for anything that I could cut out that would contribute to my ‘Travel’ Moodboard.

I had a realisation… just as with a spider diagram I am ‘looking through my thoughts’ and making a note of anything relevant… with a moodboard I am ‘looking through my environment’ and taking images from it when I see anything that is relevant. I had made the mistake of thinking that I needed to locate the images purposefully when what I actually need to do is rummage in and plunder the visual world.

This seems obvious now (and I’ve only collected 4 images so far) but I didn’t get the right sense of it from reading and re-reading information about moodboards. There are plenty of descriptions on the internet about what they are for once they’re done but I hadn’t found a real step-by-step guide in terms of what to be thinking at the creation stage. So here it is…

Creating a Moodboard

Step 1: Empty your mind of ideas. Look around and find something that has imagery… perhaps a magazine or leaflet.

Step 2: Look through said magazine with your Moodboard subject or theme in mind and let your Right Brain draw your attention to anything that connects. (by right brain I mean don’t analyse the content… look at imagery and follow your gut)

Step 3: Clip out anything that connects (get permission from the owner of the magazine first and ask an adult to help with the sharp scissors or knife) – clipping it out doesn’t mean you have to put it on your moodboard… it just becomes the raw material.

Step 4: [I haven’t got to Step 4 but I think it’s going to be ‘Review what you have and repeat Steps 1 to 3 as much as necessary

…

So this is a classic example of an iterative process: the more result you have the more you are able to find more results (using the ones that you have as a basis for further searching).

I’ve just found myself looking through a Viking catalogue and thinking ‘This stuff is very untravelly’. Then I realise that it was all ‘Stationary’… so obviously!

Round 1

I’ve spent a while now clipping out images that have a connection to Travel.

Some classifications are emerging:

• Modes of travel: Run, walk, bike, jump, swim, motorcade, rocket, train, barge, bus, surf board
• Maps
• Activities: photography/sightseeing
• ??? – Gate, Bridge (not sure what to call this… the images suggest walking for pleasure and my gut feels there’s a category here that I can’t name yet
• ??? – building the Burmah railway – a photo from the war showing POWs and Japanese soldiers toiling
• Accessories for travel: mobile phones/devices, tax disc from my car
• ??? – A telescope (this made me think about travel in the mind – taking you to a location through the telescope without moving)

So far I have little in the way of specific Colour or Texture – it’s mostly more concrete objects. There are some interesting links to other things… like the telescope and the Burmah railway.

People feature universally: people are either travelling or at the destinations. This comes back to my previous drawings around travel and the idea that it broadens the mind – it is the minds of people that are connecting with other locations: experiencing them and taking them in.

The tax disc represents a ‘Permit’, like a passport. Travel documents are very important. They have a texture of their own – a ‘manilla and print’ feel; security printing; punched holes; stamps.

Many of the imagery is of sport – this is perhaps another concept altogether as ‘travel’ in sport is not considered the point. Also the colours and textures in sporting imagery is of a ‘commercial’ nature: advertising and branding dominates, strong colours and patterns too.

Thinking Time

You know when you’re trawling through a pile of magazine and other printed matter, clipping out relevant imagery, and you have too much time to think about what you’re doing an whether you’re doing it right? I just did that.

I’ve lost my way a bit… am I making a mood board by collecting together travel-related imagery (‘Travel’ is the topic) to find out what it looks like or am I using my other notes to curate a collection of imagery that demonstrates a preconceived look?

I’m going to post that on a forum and see what people say.

Travel Moodboard

In my feedback my tutor mentioned that I should post my moodboard so we could see it… embarassing really because I just forgot to upload it, and tutors are paid for better things than to remind me to administrate my blog!

Anyway – here is an in-real-life paper stuck-on-card moodboard for travel.

I found this to be an exhausting process. ticking it all on was fun but searching for imagery is not. Neither is it very rewarding. I think it’s difficult for me personally because I’m not already knee deep in disposable reading material. I have a few New Scientists and the locl free newspaper comes through the door once a week but it’s not a diverse set of magazines and reading materials.

These clippings I think I got almost exclusively from other people’s discarded magazines and it took a while to collect them. Even then there wasn’t enough to fill the page and I find myself thinking of kinds of pictures that I don’t have.

Exercise: Writing a Brief

Stumped

Not for the first time this exercise has stumped me. I’m like the horse that doesn’t leave the starting stall when al the doors spring open (Happiness is a cigar called Hamelt?).

The problem is this… in my imagination I think of a brief being written that says something like this…

Create an illustration for the news article entitled “Spoils of War” which deals with the knock-on effects of war for countries adjacent to those which are actually at war. The illustration can visually demonstrate any of the topics in the piece. The readership is assumed to be inquiring and intelligent. The image will be heading the article so should lead the reader to want to know more details.

…which is fine. Then I think “but this doesn’t tell me anything about the actual content of the image… that’s the skill in the creation of the illustration, to research (read the article and read around the subject) and compose a suitable image.

So… if my logic holds… reverse engineering this – starting with the image – results in a brief with an awful lot of details missing… the details that came from the research. So my block then is that I feel my answer to the question will be almost unconnected to the ‘inspiring’ picture.

Putting my worries aside then let me try it:

Rosie the Riveter

Norman Rockwell is an all time favourite illustrator and Painter of mine. I enjoy both the expression of his brush – the vivid lifelike toning – and the information content of his works. The expressions he puts on peoples’ faces are wonderful.

Recent biographers have revealed that he worked from photographs of models in order to achieve some of his most famous work, probably including this image for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

I don’t know the real story behind this image – why it was procured – but ‘Rosie the Riveter’ was like the wartime women’s equivalent of ‘Uncle Sam’ –  Rockwell’s work is well-know for its attention to detail… well above and beyond those provided by the photographic references, although those photographs themselves were posed by the artist and so may have gone a long way to providing the end results in terms of setting things up in the photo that could then be include in the final image.

A brief from, say, the Post’s Art editor, might have requested the following:

A cover for the Post, May 29 1943, depicting the known character-concept “Rosie the Riveter”. It must be clear who she is and the illustration must uphold all of the expectations that the public might have about her character: Strongly patriotic, pride in herself and her work, a capable worker for the war effort. Rosie is a role model for women of working age and so she should appeal to them on terms that they will relate to.

And so I imagine that this brief was sufficient for Norman Rockwell to produce the work that he did. I also imagine that there could have been many subsequent discussions about the work before is was completed that enabled some of the details to be established. For example, Rosie is of a mysterious beauty – neither conventionally glamorous-looking (by today’s fashions) but far from looking rugged and ‘leather skinned’ as we might expect her male counterpart to appear after working in the hash conditions of his trade. I expect the model for this image was most carefully considered to ensure that she represented everywoman rather than acquiring the look of an un-attainable ‘pin-up’.

From here I can imagine that Rockwell started to compose the image introducing numerous details as he went…

• The woman’s pose… pausing before taking even the first bite from her lunch, perhaps she thanks god for what she is about to receive and spares a thought for the service men and women that she is working in support of. She looks confident and intelligent because of this ‘pause’
• Red lipstick and fashionable hair – an essential trade-mark of the wartime woman – brought with her into the job. These things that represent a woman are not left at the gates, they come to work with her. She does not have to become a man to be a riveter.
• Red White and Blue: the colours of Patriotism, blatantly in the flag behind Rosie, are also repeated through her own image: Red is the hair, lips, socks and the nose and hose of the riveter; blue denim (itself a US symbol) and work shirt; white in the pale skin, badges and highlights.
•  “ROSIE” on the lunch tin. This style of lunch tin is a symbol of the working man in US, now co-opted for the woman. At the time children also used lunch boxes such as these in emulation of their fathers. This becomes quite a deep symbol – perhaps Rosie is also using the lunch box to emulate here fellow “working man” – US servicemen?
• If I could read the badges in the picture I’m sure they would all represent organisations of relevance. To her contemporaries these tiny representations depicted on Rosie probably were recognisable and associated with the war effort in some way. The Red Cross seems to be immediately visible.
• The cloth on her lap seems casual and might be dismissed… but it might also hint at the shape of a skirt…?
• The turn-ups at the ends of the trousers serve both to reveal the red socks and to suggest oversized clothing. A woman in a man’s clothing, doing a “man’s” work. [as we know… Flashdance later reveals that woman can weld just as well as a man 😉 but that they can also dance!]
• Finally… this woman-next-door wielding a riveting weapon has put up her feet to have lunch on a copy of Mein Kampf, and seems to be making a bit of a mess of it. This pose, in black leather shoes, also suggests the ‘shoe shine’ and, at a stretch, might be implying that Hitler is only good enough to shine her shoes. Are her legs in a ‘V’ shape for Victory?

Altogether it can be seen that this image as been thought about in great detail and even details that might be just ‘part of the picture’ have been composed with deliberation and forethought both for the actual image and the implied meanings. The picture is painted in oils which would have taken a long time to do due to the nature of the paint so planning is also important in this medium.

The following web page: Penny Colman – On writing Rosie the Riveter, reveals a few more details – such as the inclusion of a lady’s hankecheif and powder compact in Rosie’s pocket. It also reveals the origin of the concept as being a song “Rosie the Riveter” released in Jan 1943 – the lyrics describe Rosie as doing her bit and having an absent Beau at the front line and would have been the bulk of the material used to create her appearance.

So here’s another hypothesis about how this commission might have gone… and how the ‘brief’ may have been this conversation:

[phone rings – Norman Rockwell answers]

NORMAN ROCKWELL: Hello, the Rockwell Residence, who’s calling please?

BEN HIBBS (on phone): Hello Norman, it’s Ben at the POST, how are you all?

NR: Ben! We’re all well thank you. How’s the news this week?

BH: That’s what I’m calling you about… it’s all a bit sensitive so we’ve got to be careful what we print – could you come up with a cover for the May 23 issue? Something popular that doesn’t ignore the war but also doesn’t suggest anything strategic – we wouldn’t want to unwittingly predict an invasion or something.

NR: Why, sure Ben, I’ve got just the thing… have you heard the new song that’s all the rage… you know… the one about Rosie the Riveter?

BH: Yes, of course, it’s being played everywhere. Why?

NR: Well how about I paint her? Rosie the Riveter?

BH: Hey! Norman! That’s a great idea… but… you’d best be careful about copyright – we can’t actually use the phrase ‘Rosie the Riveter’.

NR: Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered. I even know someone who looks the part – works at the telephone exchange. She’s practically perfect as a model.

BH: OK, Norman. I’ll leave it with you.

In my fictional account of this commission (Norman paints Rosie the screenplay) I’m projecting some of the confidence of Norman’s painting back into his persona, suggesting that his obvious talent and composition skills were respected enough for the editor of the POST to leave the whole thing in his hands. I don’t think it happens like that at the start of a career and, in our modern world where collaborations are born and burnt very quickly perhaps most commissions are now newly-forged alliances that have to stipulate a lot more detail than I’ve suggested in either scenario above.

Also… as with many ‘famous’ inspiring practicioners, they may be hired for the style that they do… so telling them how to do that might be redundant.

Un Stumped?

I might have now completed this exercise. What do you think?

The phrase that perhaps stumped me was “right a brief that would have led to the creation of the image”.

I think this should be read as “right a brief that might have led…”. The illustrator will have to work within their inspiration so different illustrators would produce very different work. This idea is exemplified by the range of responses produced to design competitions.

The time in which the brief is written is crucial – if the first brief above had been given today (even as a retrospective to the 1930s) I think she would have been depicted differently. Apart from the obvious technology, fashion and clothing differences we may have expected her to have more authority – a managing or directing role would be appropriate, as would a white-collar worker… perhaps even a man working in childcare…!?

 

 

 

Exercise: Exploring Drawing and Painting

Birthday Cake

Although I’m becoming allergic to taking the suggestions in the exercise literally the idea of a birthday cake has given me an idea. I’m going to use each page to represent a year of my life… maybe not all of my years, see how much time I’ve got… then I’m going to depict a birthday cake on each page that is shaped, decorated, transformed… to evoke the mood or events of that year. In this way I will have material to draw on to explore all the materials and substrates on offer.

Parts of a birthday cake that matter:

• Lit candles on the top, maybe the smaller ones for units and bigger ones for tens, maybe in helix shapes like a barber’s pole;
• shapes like cylinders and ‘slices’ (wedges);
• celebration decorations – sparkles, sprinkles; icing decorations – extruded stars;
• layers of sponge and jam, maybe fruit cake;
• ribbons around the full cake;
• bows and flourishes;
• flakes of chocolate;
• silver sugar balls;
• other fruit of the moment;
• Icing applied thickly with a knife in thick, expressive, painterly daubes;
• expressions of birthday apparel – balloons, presents, flowers;
• bite marks;
• cheeky mice;
• candle smoke;
• Fruity, sweet sauces;

Papers…

1. Used photographic backdrop roll… like cartridge paper but a bit grubby. (2012, age 42)
   Used some old fluorescent highlighters (“Light” for light-based media like photography). Filled in the background with a short stick of charcoal (now on my computer keyboard too!) pressing not too hard. The paper did not have a rough surface but neither is it in any way glossy. Being used it sports a number of slight creases from handling and where it’s been walked and jumped on in the studio. The charcoal picked out some of these imperfections as stronger marks but also left more definite marks where the ends of the square charcoal stick pressed more on the paper than the middle.
2. Paper bag from a sandwich shop (sandwich no-longer present. It was very nice).
   There could be a slice of cake in the bag from a party. I left this on my desk hoping to collect some rings from tea and coffee mugs… but somehow that didn’t happen. So I got a saucer of cold coffee and made a ring of rings deliberately. It was quite faint once it had dried… I think the paper is less absorbent than normal – perhaps waxed… I drew around the stains using a fineliner. This will be a coffee cake. I thought the candles should be burned into the pattern using sun and a magnifying glass. Waiting for the sun now.
3. Page from a scrapbook – brown, rough paper. Used pastels to draw a cake slice and one candle all about to be eaten. The phrase ‘Cake Hole’ made me think of cake vanishing into a black hole.., in this case the mouth. So the mouth is a black area. I want to draw the lips glossy like they’re wet – mouth-watering perhaps. We have no red lipstick in the house.
   I tried rubbing the pastel through a fruit net to try to get a pattern but it wouldn’t rub so I tried ‘stippling’ through the net. This resulted in a lot of pastel dust falling through onto the paper but the pastel didn’t strike the paper because of the net. I effectively had a layer of blue dust on the paper now so I padded it with my finger to make it stick to the paper. This unintended and elaborate way of getting the colour onto the surface resulting in a strong colour but without any ‘strokes’ visible… it looks a little like it has been sprayed on.
4. Wallpaper – heavy embossed. This reminded me of the 70s (yuck) so I drew my last cake of the decade – my 10th birthday. It’s just a watercolour set (the solid disc type for kids) and some glitter-glue (for the icing and candles). I drew a big central silver glitter candle to represent the flute I got for that birthday but it didn’t really look right. A composition problem – it’s stuck in a cake, how could it look like a flute? The pattern in black and orange is remniscent of wallpaper of the era. This type of design is retro and cool again at the moment. In the 70s it made me a little sick!

…and then I gave up this detailed method as I was getting bogged down by it. Here is the completed book of cake which I have called “Cake on FIRE”… ’cause that’s what it is.

Cover – oil on board. The oil paint soaked into the acrylic/emulsion background colour and created a stain. Quite interesting.

This one is interesting… it has a ‘rebellious schoolchild’ theme… The paper is a page out of my OCA folder and the cake has been drawn in ink pen to look like a target. The candles are like arrows that have struck the target and the flames are holes in the paper that have been burnt there using a magnifying glass and the sun.

Paper bag from a shop. Coffe stains. I drew around the stains with a pen.

Charcoal and ink. A contrast in media texture.

Ink on glossy card. The ink didn’t soak in so had plenty of overlaps which I made use of.

Back cover (Found. Although I painted it too… it was a while ago).

Exercise: Turning words into pictures

Why are ‘Adjectives’ described here as “most difficult to draw”? Surly these are words like ‘Blue’, ‘Big’, ‘Wet’, ‘Furry’ which are all visually obvious. Does this only refer to the other adjectives like ‘Noisy’, ‘Heavy’, ‘Fast’, ‘Revered’ which are not visual? Are the non-visual Adjectives a bigger set than the visual ones? Answers on a peer-reviewed postcard please.

Aren’t Adverbs quite hard? To illustrate the way in which an action is performed sounds hard. How to show ‘Running carelessly‘ or ‘Reading longingly‘ or ‘Stroking gently‘? Some of those are more easy than others too.

You see how sceptical I am when someone writes a ‘fact’ – I instantly question it… ‘is that a fact?’

Childhood

 

A tentative start with childhood. Bearing in mind the way that the previous exercise went I tried to allow myself to introduce more kinds of thing… but it’s still largely based on objects that are part of childhood and doesn’t deal with abstract concepts.

I tried to loosen my approach with some random things… drawing on typography and puns a bit to see what the possibilities might be with respect to ‘doodling’ and linking ideas in my head to imagery on the page. Puns are interesting  I-Patch has a double meaning… a patch worn on the eye, or a patch in the shape of an ‘i’. I pondered that I could illustrate the whole of the Paul Simon song ‘Call me Al’.

Destruction

With ‘Destruction’ I began to break out of the habit of looking directly for objects… there is  a small sketch of a tree falling over next to a cow with a ‘McDonalds’ M on its side. This is in the realm of editorial cartoons and represents the idea of rainforests being cleared to make way for profitable Beef stock – notably happening in South America. It helps here that ‘destruction’ is an action or the result of an action. These actions are carried out using tools – it is the tools of destruction that I have mostly drawn. The mushroom cloud is an exception it being a symbol or by-product of destruction.

The strange rocky tower at the bottom of the second page was going to be a glacier receding but I’m not sure to to make a drawing that is recognisably a glacier – this is an important point as, although it doesn’t need to be of photographic realism, the illustration must somehow communicate that it is the thing that it is in order to deliver its message.

Travel

I had a breakthrough of another kind when I moved on to travel. Initially I was going to send my pen on a random journey around the page and use that as a stepping stone to the next lot of thumbnails. Before I started I though of drawing a coastline rather than a random line so I drew Europe from memory (forgetting Italy). This gave me a new viewpoint… instead of just ‘Travel’ I had ‘Travel in France’, ‘Travel in English Channel’ etc and it allowed me to expand my idea of what travel meant. This became a set of ‘modes of travel’ or transports.

I wanted to explore other aspects of travel… I tried ‘Routes’ instead of ‘Modes’. This page shows Europe and some of its larger cities with airline routes drawn in. The network of travel between centres of population is representative of our travelling mindset most of the time – we move between labels on a map rather than along a route. It is not important what the specific route is only the start and end points. I think this sketch could connect with something later on and become inspiration for a further development. It resembles stars in the sky. We’ve also seen this kind of map occasionally when travel agents use it to demonstrate a large number of destinations or the many possibilities of travel.

I listed some other aspect of travel that I could investigate and ‘meaning’ made me think again about what the image represents. So I made a scene of a Pilgrim who has reached his destination. This is a journey with great meaning and, although the destination is of great significance, a pilgrimage can be made on foot and the journey is a significant experience. Although not illustration here when we see the end of a pilgrimage it puts us in mind of the journey – I have not shown the journey, but it is there if the idea of reaching the destination is communicated.

When I drew Europe I wondered if the location itself was affecting the kind of things I drew… would I not draw the same modes of transport regardless of where on Earth I was inspired by? Apparently not. I drew the Americas (from memory!) and found that the thoughts of the individual cultures inspired a lot of new ideas… Canada game me Sled and Huskies; the US encompassed the Wild West Wagon, Armoured Helicopters; a ‘Segway’; the A-Team’s GMC Van… the Space Shuttle. Oil tankers and Container ships came to mind and the row-boat in the Pacific was inspired by Hawaii (as in Hawaii 5-0 opening titles). The speedboat… Miami Vice… or perhaps it’s just Jeremy Clarkson again?

Containers: I tried just colouring these a little to make the Lego-brick look they have when at sea but I found that vertical hatching mimicked the texture if the real containers – the vertical corrugated design.

Since starting this exercise I’m finding ways to expand my visual vocabulary. It is still mired in the objects rather than conceptual meanings so I tried to find something to illustrate that was specifically a non-noun. I cam up with the idea that ‘Travel broadens the mind’ and made this:

 

The traveller has a very big head in order to accommodate the whole world, her eyes are globes and her face is inscribed with Maori tattoos – impressions that will stay with her forever. Monuments and icons of locations orbit the globes and her mouth is full of greetings in other languages. She stands in a pose of wonderment as if finally home. Her shadow grounds her.

On her face are also tears… a sign of emotional impact of her journey (not necessarily tragic)… and a spearhead from the American Indian tradition.

I’ve started to use a variety of media for the colour – fine and broad ink pens and coloured pastel pencils, which are occasionally smudged to create softer impressions.

Music

An interesting aside is the role music played during these drawings. My working environment is not ideal – often a little too noisy with people about – so I sometimes use headphones and music to block out the type of distracting noise that is less helpful with something more ‘energizing’. I just used Spotify to play TV theme tunes and it was interesting how many of them suggested travel ideas… not all of them made it to the sketches: Dr Who and Black Beauty were left out… I didn’t cover Time Travel and bareback horse riding. ‘Lost in Space’ did make me think a bit wider than terrestrial conveyance though.

While writing this up I’ve turned to John Williams for some pleasant background and am now listening to the OMPS for the movie ‘The Terminal’ which is set in an airport terminal. Travel is a big, big subject – it touches everything… parted lovers, heroic quests, acts of war, pilgrimages of peace, journeys of discovery and coming-of-age (both literal and metaphorical journeys). The reasons and results of travel are wide-ranging and I probably could plumb the depths of this subject much more deeply than other concepts.

Airport

I’ve carried on developing the style and idea of the last image. This one is notionally set in an airport (although that it is not communicated directly) and the two characters are travellers with differing experiences. I’ve tried to capture here the ‘lightness of being’ one feels when travelling – culture shock – and this is a case where they are perhaps returning home but their most vivid thoughts are of where they have been… the character on the left is full of thoughts of a peaceful place, and the other character has been to a war zone (if she were to resemble Orla Guerin that would be sweet… but I didn’t intend it so).

I drew the head contents first using ink pens, pencils and a touch of coloured charcoal. The background was sketched in using black ink and the colour added mostly by filing soft colour pastels and brushing the ‘dust’ onto the page… I then used a small paintbrush to arrange it before squashing it onto the paper and smearing it with my finger. I tried a number of ways to crush it including a pallet knife, a pencil end and, for the red dots on the right, I covered the area with thin paper and rubbed over it firmly.

At the end of all this the characters looked too flat so I shaded them with grey ink so they could be better defined.

I’m very pleased with the specific effect produced by the soft pastels… I would like to find a more striking way to represent the imagery in their heads. Perhaps that area needs to have a dark background or use a less ‘sketchy’ method – perhaps areas of tone rather than lines or stuck on elements making them 3D. At the moment they look too uncontrolled like the background (but in a different way) – it would be good to create more of a style contrast so that the head thoughts are clearer.

Ideas in Image Form

Spurred on by assorted bits of feedback from my tutor I’m starting a strand here to investigate the illustration as ‘Ideas in Image Form’. I’m initially interested in the distinguishing illustrations that convey and idea and looking directly at what is done in the planning or execution of the illustration in order to have that idea conveyed.

Some types of idea:

• Story
• Emotion
• Fact / Statement
• Connection
• Opinion (not necessarily the artist’s)
• Question
• Historical event (or a changed historical event)
• Interaction
• Personality (a person’s character)

After  a page of doodles I’ve hit upon an interesting project for myself… I got to men walking which reminded me of the Paul Simon lyrics from “You can call me Al”. When I first encountered this song in the 1980’s iPhones were not available in order to Google (also not extant) the lyrics and their meaning (Thanks due here to Denise who put me right about it being “You can call me Betty” rather than “Benny”). It turns out to have an autobiographical meaning inspired by Paul Simon’s visit to Sun City in South Africa during Apartide and the subsequent entertainers boycot which Paul Simon broke. The three verses deal with his experiences in a new and unfamiliar land – the perspective of a naive foreigner having the truth revealed to him and how it put other things in context. I can see this as one illustration or a series of illustrations (like a page from a graphic novel perhaps) per verse. A Black and White theme also seems a possible idea. The current flag in Red, Blue, White, Black, Gold and Green was adopted in the 90’s for the new democracy… the flag contemporary with the Paul Simon song is a (now unfamiliar) Gold, White and Blue banded flag with three smaller flags in the centre (including the Union Flag) adopted in 1928.

 

Exercise: Spider Diagrams

The ‘Seaside’ – as a family we’ve been to the seaside a number of times. I generated all of the black ideas shown just out of my head. I then asked my 9-year-old daughter (who is, of course, a Seaside ‘expert’) and her responses are in Pink. My wife’s contributions are in green.

What is immediately obvious is the lack of overlap between my daughter’s and my own ideas. We  had some things in common – Beach Huts, Castles, Boats, Shells, Crabs… Other things like Fairgrounds and Arcades comes from my own personal experience of seaside resorts as an adult (mainly on tour with a ballet company and visiting out of season… they can be very grim places in the winter).

My daughter contributed a huge number of things that are specific to her own experience – “Shady posh avenues in town”. She thought of a few classics – like Ice-cream and Fish and Chips as well as her own individual items.

A Google Image Search inspired:

• Punch and Judy
• Cliffs
• Promenade
• Bikini
• Sun cream

Overall I found the Seaside easiest – it has many clear ‘objects’ and visual references easily to hand.

Childhood was harder and when my daughter added her own child’s view of childhood it became daunting because we had so few matches – there seemed to be an endless number of quite personal views of childhood.

When I did the exercise I was thinking ‘generically’ – ‘a childhood’ rather than specifically of MY childhood… BUT… when I compared the things my daughter thought of I realised that we were again both drawing on personal experience and phrasing those items in a more generalised way.

For example I wrote ‘bike’ but my actual mental image is a very specific bike: a purple raleigh ‘Budgie’ with only a front brake, the rear wheel was slightly larger than the front, the saddle was long and black, it had no gears and I rode it for years. My daughter’s bike was a ‘Little Mermaid’, it was blue-green, had two brakes, a rear rack and a front basket.

What can I say about that? My childhood contained ‘Purple’ in the form of the bike. My daughters’ contained ‘Blue-Gree’ also in the form of a bike. Is there a ‘childhood colour’? Experiences differ.

The red marks here are my brother-in-law who seems, again, to be drawing heavily on his own experience.

 

Our own experience of anger now reveals something… this is the brain trying to look at itself – an in this case it’s difficult. ‘Angry’ is a ‘state of mind’ – it’s not easy to analyse yourself but in a different mood!

I found this very hard – trying to find words that related to angry led often ‘off topic’ to things associated with anger that don’t necessarily work in reverse – many things were the result or side-effect of anger like violent, damage, loss of control, but anger is an emotion – it is felt inside rather than being an action or an object and it was much harder to pin down the words that were really connected.

My daughter, interestingly, cam up with ‘Literacy’ because she’s learnt about the word ‘Anger’. A meta-meaning.

She also recalled a book in which one of the characters was angry… a label to describe the character.

Festival was more like beach, but less familiar. Festival has a few different meanings – it could be Notting Hill or Glasto – so each of those evokes a different range of ideas. I have no experience of either of those types of Festival.

 

After Tutor Feedback

One of the notes I got from my tutor was about anger – she suggested that I think also about ‘how it emanates’, and gave an example “Incandescent” as being visually descriptive of the result of someone being angry. With this in mind here are some more words…

•  Shaking
  • of fists
  • other people
  • furniture
• [Red-faced]
  • Blood boiling
  • Tight skinned tension
• Stormy, storming
• Hopping
• Bull in a china shop
• Unfettered
• Unbridled
• Electrified
• Boiling over
• Thunderous

There seems to be a lot more ground to cover on this word. Angry is different to the other two words – Festival and Childhood are more like objects that can be described… anger is a feeling, you can’t point to it. These words are derived from the visual impression of the angry person. In this sense it is indirect – via an intermediary – but all closer to our visual experience of the world rather than only relying on our inner experience.

This reveals how powerful the ability to make a connection from visual to inner experience might be. Reacting to an image is the making of that connection by the viewer… I see a visual representation of anger and I connect with the emotion it describes. We do this all the time when reading a person’s mood by looking at their face.

These people are angry. More words inspired from these images are

• Accusing
• Stern
• Warring
• Deadly
• Glare
• Fixated
• Energised
• Tightly wound spring
• Harsh response
• Harmful intent