LAUIL503: Studio Brief 3 - Cowslip Poem Visual Research

• From research into Agatha Christie's life through ITV's Perspectives documentary, narrated by David Suchet who plays Poiroit, a poem was read out towards the beginning written by an extremely young Agatha

• The poem was incredibly charming features characters of a Cowslip, Deadly Nightshade and a butterfly. Would I change my project proposal?

• I didn't find my sketches to be too successful though they helped me to better understand the shapes of the flowers before cutting them

• I really like how the textures and cut outs worked, giving a very childlike and children's book tone of voice - could this direct my final outcome in some way alongside print-based techniques? I find the right hand page to be a bit of a eureka moment for me and I would lie to continue in this direction!

LAUIL503 :Studio Brief 3 - Project Proposal

BAIL – LAUIL503

STUDIO BRIEF 3 PROJECT PROPOSAL

What is an ‘Author’?

NAME: Kimberley Burrows

What are you responding to?

·      Who is your author? Agatha Christie ·      Why have you selected them? A number of things draw and magnetise me to Christie. She is the epitome of the Classic Author and has so much rich imagery repeated throughout her catalogue of novels. Often referred to as the 'Queen of Crime', her books combined are the best-selling in the world - second only to the Bible. She was largely popular as a female writer when men still very much dominated the genre and writing in general, and broke down many barriers. We have many things in common as people including our love of British heritage, travelling to new places, writing, being alone, a love for dogs and being by the sea. She lived a fascinating life outside of being an author, as a nurse during the war ad going on many archaeological expeditions with her second husband, even ‘disappearing’ for a few days when she was younger and her first marriage had collapsed - creating a real-life mystery for herself which was highly sensationalised by the papers, with a national search party! ·      What is their work about? Christie often focuses on themes of mystery, crime and murder, with poison as the murder weapon, often referred to as a woman's weapon of choice. She had a great knowledge of plants and poisons, being a nurse during the war and dispensing medications. Her settings were often exotic due to her vast travel experience and archaeological knowledge, ·      What are you responding to specifically? I.e. poem, song, book etc… I will be responding the novel ‘The Murder on the Orient Express.’ The strong symbol of the train paired with the sense of adventure and travel juxtaposed with darker themes of murder and mystery excite me greatly and the visual outcomes will be both challenging and fun to experiment with.

What processes do you intend to use? (a minimum of 2.)

·      Which processes are relevant to your own creative practice? Cut shapes, type, monoprinting / gelliprinting ·      Why? These were some of the most successful processes in my Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Dracula brief pieces and I would like to revisit and expand on the skills I have gained so far. Cut shapes and gelli printing (similar to monoprinting) gives the aura of the handmade and the analogue, providing many textures that imbue elements of mystery and intrigue – something that can marry well with Christie’s work. Type is an essential aspect of Christie’s practice as she used an old typewriter. ·      Which were the most successful/challenging? Type ·      Why? I’m not used to using this as an aspect of illustration or design as I previously saw it as something a graphic designer would do, completely separate from myself, but am I not a designer too? Since creating my own handmade type for Dracula, I feel like I have gained a new skill and a newfound appreciation for how strong type can be within a composition and how it can be used to convey a feeling. ·      Justify your choices…

What outcome do you intend to pursue? (speculate at this stage)

A publication to marry with the fact she is a published author. I plan on experimenting quite a lot with the aforementioned selected processes both in analogue and digitally so a number of outcomes produced will exceed the prints or the gif. While I found making a gif enjoyable, and it retained the hand of the maker, I’m not sure if it is a suitable outcome for what I want to make. A series of prints feels very limiting.  I want to experiment more with paper stock nd how it can juxtapose or compliment my outcomes which I found to be a successful aspect of my Dracula screenprint.

Considerations: Dimensions, a belly band for the publication, compositions, paper stock, colour palette, the type process I want to use (digital type on the computer, handmade type, type in the print wood from wood block and why)

Be critical and reflective. Make sure that you justify your decisions through your research. Staff reserve the right to VETO any unsuitable proposals. This should be a minimum of 100 words.

LAUIL503: Studio Brief 2 - Moving Image Test and Final Outcome

Test Gif

• Before going in and photographing my the assets for my actual gif, I decided to do a test with some blue-tac

• This helped me get used to the process and the magnetic tripod which seemed to need more and more support!

• The lighting kept changing a little bit over the course of a few minutes which causes a bit of inconsistency. Is this the charm of the hand-made?

• The good thing about this is it allowed me to get used to putting it in Photoshop and setting up the specifications correctly for my actual gif too (700 pixels along the longest side, 72 dpi, saving for web, etc.)

Dracula Gif

• Here it is! I'm so proud of what I've achieved today!

• I was really nervous at the beginning of this session because I was pretty soured at the prospect of collaboration with how the lino printing outcomes turned out with no space left for my stamp design and not many wanting to redo theirs to accommodate my design in the final piece.

• My team were very helpful with assisting in my set up of the tripod for my mobile phone using a mix of blue tac and masking tape and helping to get some red gouache for me for the blood drips. I was incredibly grateful for this and perhaps collaboration isn't all bad! 

• It isn't perfect by any means but I think there is an element of "aura" to the handmade

• The lighting changed a lot in the studio while I was taking my series of photographs so there's a slight inconsistency there that couldn't be helped. In a more professional setting, the lighting would not change and be dictated by natural light which is prone to change

• I had brought other props in (cut out letters of my type on black paper) to perhaps play against lighting, but I'm glad I decided against it in the end as perhaps too much would have been happening at once which I am known to do 

• Lighting happened anyway against the paper cape and the directional lighting onto my coloured background which was pretty neat and reminiscent of the ballet!

• I'm glad I kept it simple

LAUIL503: Studio Brief 2 - Screen Print Outcomes

Final Screen Print Design

A lot of problem solving!

- Red paper was sold out so I opted for the maroon

- I was polite and asked if I could print out my cape design onto my coloured paper either using the library printers or using the photocopier, rather than just putting the paper in without asking or getting into trouble. I was denied as the paper "could jam up the machines." What do I do now?!! I just bought this paper and had it cut to size!!

- I turned the cape design into a bitmap using the information sheet from estudio and planned to do a two layer screen print to at least have my design on the coloured paper and something to show for the morning session. Would this be okay for the brief?

- However! Upon printing out my bitmap, the design was completely ruined and there were lines throughout the bitmap dot work because of the rollers in the black and white printer. Either the rollers needed cleaning or other people had put their coloured paper into the printer previously and messed it up. This was no longer an option - I could not screen print with a ruined design and it would take an awful lot of fixing with tape or special gel that is just too much work and prep for the time we have in the session.

- I got in touch with the digital print workshop down in the basement so I would screen print my lettering first and then print my design on afterwards

- However! Mike in the print room very kindly printed my design on all 20 pieces of coloured paper using the printer in the print room office and my design from my USB key. Hurrah!

- So much problem solving in under an hour and a few avenues I could have taken. I'm proud of myself for thinking on my feet, coming up with a number of different solutions, being proactive with emailing the print room and creating a bitmap, image which I've never done before, even though I was against the clock for the screen printing session - and not feeling defeated which is very easy for me to do after a few hard years and bad mental health.

Playful Outcomes

- After I got a number of perfect prints, I wanted to push my design further and be playful with the alignment of the text and the image

- I also did a number of pulls onto one image to create a very thick and very textural font as the paint was drying at this point. I really liked the texture, coming out in dots and lines, and thought it added a lot of character to the print; evoking a darker tone, textures like wood and stone for graves and wooden stakes, and a feeing of an older and ancient being.

- Changing the alignment of the text, particularly where it overlayed multiple times, also gave a feeling of the type being made from ancient signs and symbols. Like a hidden or forgotten language!

- The ghost prints were particularly interesting giving me feelings of apparitions or spooky hidden meanings. Multiple layers to be unearthed. 

LAUIL503: Studio Brief 2 - Type Play and Developing Screen Print Design

Scanning my font into the computer, cleaning it up in Photoshop and arranging in different ways.

I particularly like the "balance" of the third arrangement

I scanned in the "off cuts" of paper, or the negative space, of my letters which creates an interesting language of shapes. I filled this with my photography from the graveyard behind Leeds University and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. 

• Played with mixing both the "positives" and "negatives" cut off shapes of the fonts, filling the cut offs with the photography instead

• Added some of the shadow play letters and changed the blending layer in Photoshop

• Added some bats and then a Dracula-like figure to add focus to the centre of the composition

• What will happened if the type isn't white? A mess! There is now no focus and no contrast. This isn't working

• Far too much going on at once with too many layers, the purple isn't working for me as there's too many tones. What will print out successfully and what won't once it gets transferred to black and white and printed onto coloured paper?

• I tried blue here and I just feel like the tone of Dracula is lost completely. I'm not happy at all with how much time I've spent on this and how overdone I'm finding it.

• Looking back to the contextual studies I did previously, simplicity is key!

• What now? 'm not even happy with the layout of the typeface and may redo the composition altogether as I'm feeling limited

• This D looks like a Nosferatu face. It wasn't intentional but a happy occurrence.

• What if I arrange the letters in my type so that the D is at the top and the rest looks like a body? This is something I would never have thought of before but the previous and "typical" way of working has backed me into a corner that I'm not happy with

• This is quite interesting! Because I used my hands for my type, it translates well to being Dracula's hands! My acrylic nails that I had professionally done really translate well too as vampiric talons. Nice! 

• What shall I do for the image layer? Something simple like a cape?

• I used a digital watercolour brush that is affected by pressure as I wanted to mimic the lighting from the ballet and let that impact my work

• Looking back at my contextual research, red, black and white were most successful to portray blood, lust, shadow, a dark character, themes of horror and a sharp contrast with white. Which elements do I want to colour which way?

• Adding fangs to the D! A nice use of negative imagery, basic shape and adding a focal point

• I had quite a central alignment composition which I felt didn't really say anything? So played with sizing and alignment.

• The smaller Dracula felt like he wasn't as imposing or threatening, a much quieter figure. The bigger one taking up more of the canvas felt more imposing

• The right alignment gives a sense of him coming forth, looming towards and like he has moved. There is space behind him

• Overall this has been quite an exhausting and exhaustive process. Not having constraints to work with this time threw me a little bit, colour especially, and having that freedom and total control of the output is both good and bad as things can be overworked to oblivion as I did at first throwing everything at my first outcome. Having constraints in place for yourself and not overworking something and keeping it simple is the key to a successful image.