LAUIL504: Studio Brief 2 - Personal Illustrations about Loneliness and Mental Illness

Last summer I tackled the heavy subject of my own depression and turning them into visual metaphors, creating an editorial-style series of illustrations. This was challenging and therapeutic in equal measures. Am I saying too much or not enough in my illustrations? Which direction do I want them to go and how dark do I want to make them whilst still trying to retain my identity as an illustrator who loves telling stories where not all hope is lost?

Depression is often referred to as being "the deep blue sea," so I kept my colour palette simple with shades of blue, giving a cold atmosphere in the process. Compositionally and thematically I wanted to demonstrate the loneliness and isolation that depression gives the sufferer in metaphorical situations such as an uphill battle / struggle and drowning in too much emotion, along with more suffocating structures to represent feeling like a prisoner in one's own mind and feeling alone and defeated in a crowded space; the walls slowly closing in and people walking all over you forgetting that you exist. I added textures, rather than retaining solid colour and shape, to demonstrate the complexity and many layers to mental illness. It isn't just black and white and there is more underneath the surface of a person and their situation.

Contemporary editorial illustrators I used as inspiration for this project included Nick Rhodes (Switchopen) and Dadu Shin. Switchpen's White Lies concert poster has successful use of minimal colour palette of blue, black and white, cleverly moving the eye across the composition with colour contrasts to highlight focal components. Dadu Shin has a distinct minimalist approach to filling a canvas space where things still feel balanced despite the open space.

Reflecting on my work I consider it a personal achievement and accomplishment. A lot of thought and care went into making it with a genuine authenticity. 

I want to use these illustrations as a starting point and as a basis of contextual research for my One and Only picture book dealing with similar subject matter of a lonely bird of paradise who also suffers from isolation and exclusion. My own personal experiences can resonate very powerfully when illustrating the narrative and this is why the text is rather important to me. No one should feel alone when we are so surrounded by so many people but there are a variety of things that still cut us off in society.