Sketchbook Work...

These are some pictures of the rest of my sketchbook, just experimenting with different ways of presenting texts and trying out ideas.

The Road Not Taken, with Alice.

Interchanging characters, Alice carrying Pooh down the stairs rather than Christopher Robin; and Tigger as the Cheshire Cat.

Using Winnie the Pooh characters to illustrate Macbeth in 6 scenes.

Trying characters out with different poems - Fire and Ice and To See a World in a Grain of Sand. 

 

Manipulating photograms.

 

Breaking up the story - images from T.S Eliot's The Waste Land, which is a very disjointed and unstructured poem which suits my project immensely. It is where I got my title of A Heap of Broken Images.

If you're interested: The Waste Land

 

Using Greek Myths and Wuthering Heights as sources.

I combined an image of the White Rabbit with the first few lines of Dulce Et Decorum Est, I think it quite dramatically changes your perceptions of the image.

 

Artist Inspiration...W.W. Denslow

Some examples of Denslow's work, I used this when looking at The wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Exploring The Wizard of Oz....

I did a bit of research into W.W. Denslow's work, who illustrated The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. These are some of the pages I did.

I was exploring the character of Dorothy in these pages, both responding to Denslow's illustrations and making my own. In the page above, I updated her and also drew her in the style of John Tenniel.

I quite liked Denslow's use of flat colour in single spaces - I noticed in a lot of his work, the characters themselves often have no colouring, but are surrounded by patches. It was this that I tried to emulate in these pages.

I experimented with using silhouettes on the above page, with small dashes of colour to see how that would affect the sharp forms.

Looking at the other characters and manipulating them with colour.

This was based around a piece of thread that I had stuck in my book and looked like an animal's head, I added colour and a little detail to give the profile of the Cowardly Lion.

The Red Balloon...

This was a film suggested by one of my tutors, as it is a narrative without words and I originally wanted to create a series of scenes to illustrate works of the written word.

The Tate Exhibitions...

I was able to get to the Tate Modern a couple of months ago, seeing two exhibitions in one day - Henri Matisse: The Cut Outs and Richard Hamilton. I thought they would be interesting to see as they involve cutting out paper and silhouettes, as well as collage (thinking of Hamilton's best known work, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?)

I suppose the definition of collage is taking images out of context and creating new images with them - so it is definitely a good thing to look at.

Richard Hamilton:

Some examples of the work that was on display.

Although it's finished now, it's still interesting to have a look at the website and any reviews or related articles.

Tate Website: Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton, Politics and Art in the 1980s

Duchamp’s Legacy: Richard Hamilton and Sarat Maharaj

This was the modern world – part one

This was the modern world - part two

This was the modern world - part three

Henri Matisse: The Cut Outs

Here are some of the works that were on display.

It's on until the 7th September 2014, and it is well worth a look. The link to the exhibition page is below, as wells as a few pieces of accompanying literature.

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/henri-matisse-cut-outs

Lightning and Rain: Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis and Matisse’s Hand

Curator's talk: Matisse

His brilliant final chapter

Environments...

I started looking at environments in which I could place my characters. Here are some pages from my sketchbook.

I experimented with origami, using receipts to make about 3 dozen butterflies.

A collage inspired by Henri Matisse's paper cut outs.

Painted herbs taken from images in a book from the British Library.

 

Primary source sketches of trees and plants in a forest.

The next few pages were inspired by Richard Hamilton, whose exhibition is on at the Tate Modern. i used green ink and a photogram of Alice I had worked into with blue thread.

I used cut out articles of furniture from magazine as well as different types of paper to make this home scene, also inspired by Richard Hamilton.

Poems...

Here are examples of other poems I used in my project.

Auguries of Innocence

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

A Nightmare

BY W.S. Gilbert

When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is
taboo'd by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in
without impropriety;
For your brain is on fire - the bedclothes conspire of usual
slumber to plunder you:
First your counterpane goes and uncovers your toes, and your sheet
slips demurely from under you;
Then the blanketing tickles - you feel like mixed pickles, so
terribly sharp is the pricking,
And you're hot, and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till
there's nothing 'twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick
'em all up in a tangle;
Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its
usual angle!
Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eyeballs
and head ever aching,
But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very
much better be waking;
For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a
steamer from Harwich,
Which is something between a large bathing-machine and a very small
second-class carriage;
And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of
friends and relations -
They're a ravenous horde - and they all came on board at Sloane
Square and South Kensington Stations.
And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that
morning from Devon);
He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells
you he's only eleven.
Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad (by the bye
the ship's now a four-wheeler),
And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you
tell him that "ties pay the dealer";
But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find
you're as cold as an icicle,
In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks),
crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle:
And he and the crew are on bicycles too - which they've somehow or
other invested in -
And he's telling the tars all the particuLARS of a company he's
interested in -
It's a scheme of devices, to get at low prices, all goods from
cough mixtures to cables
(Which tickled the sailors) by treating retailers, as though they
were all vegeTAbles -
You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take off
his boots with a boot-tree),
And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot, and
they'll blossom and bud like a fruit-tree -
From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea,
cauliflower, pineapple, and cranberries,
While the pastry-cook plant cherry-brandy will grant - apple puffs,
and three-corners, and banberries -
The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by ROTHSCHILD
and BARING,
And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder
despairing -
You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder
you snore, for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and
pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for
your left leg's asleep, and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on
your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and
a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you haven't been
sleeping in clover;
But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last, and the
night has been long - ditto, ditto my song - and thank goodness
they're both of them over! 

Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime ...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: -
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.