Creating 'The End'- My Final Piece

I started to look at what I wanted from a final piece. I decided to explore a more contemporary side of my artwork and instead of having speech bubbles and superhero's, I decided to take it in another direction and create landscape illustrations that displayed the destroyed world around, giving the audience a closer study of the "Anti-Utopia" I had created. I also Chose to look at Dave McKean, who has worked on Graphic Novel, 'Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth'. McKean uses unique typography to display character and this was something i chose to explore in my piece.

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This piece has derived from a previous digital experiment. One of my peers suggested a use of colour, I decided to explore this through the use of typography, however it seemed to steal some of the subtlety away from the image so I decided to keep the muted colours. 

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These displays show us a world that has been decimated and human life is spare. These images have captured my intentions quite well, exploring a variety of different media and linking back to my explored artists like Russell Mills and Dave McKean with his use of typography. Anselm Kiefer becomes apparent as well through my use of collage (charcoal shards) and muted colours. It has also become a clear vision of a possible dystopian future. I believe it captures the surrealism and evokes a lot more emotion and personal distress by making it seem like a nightmare world.  I believe that my improvements could derive from exploring a more intense narrative and one that engages the reader more effectively. During this project my Photoshop skills have improved vastly, further developing my layering techniques to produce sophisticated and more complex imagery.

How do you feel I have done with my Final Piece? Do you agree with anything I've already said or do you believe I could improve in other ways? Feedback is very welcome so please feel free to comment.

Russel Mills

Investigating for this project I have decided to look at an artist I previously researched to help with my Storyboard Project in the second stage of this course. Russell Mills is a Graphic Illustrator who uses a variety of mixed media to create incredibly emotive pieces of work.

(Website here - www.byroglyphics.com)

Mills has a unique style that uses a lot of Photography mixed with distinctive and expressive splashes of paint and ink. This gives a lot of his work a sense of movement. His use reds in his images often convey strong emotion, such as violence or passion, as well as drawing the viewer to that point. This strong emotion gives huge depth to Mills work, and it is something I have tried to explore in my own work.

In this image I have layered a range of different marks, both studio and digital, on top of a photograph. I used a splash of red across my subjects face to convey the feeling of violence that goes hand in hand with the character I have created. The texture of the piece shows connections to Mills through the multimedia aspect and plays on the idea of taking real life and distorting it similarly to Mills. I believe that I could develop this style further and improve my experience with it. I could improve my understanding by exploring different view points and different positions rather than a head on viewpoint. I could also look at how different mark making techniques can influence the emotion behind my piece, possibly using softer marks and less dominant red.

What do you think? How do you think I could this image? Do you agree with what I've already said? Feedback is very welcome.

Old Man And Nemesis

At the time, I only concentrated on the more negative emotions as the model is portraying my story's villain, however I realise it would have been more beneficial to take a range of emotions similar to how I did with the Old man.

  

 After looking at the many different positions I placed my models in, I realised I could have gone further and thought about costume to help me develop a better understanding of both of them.

What do you think? do you agree with my comments already? Is there anything else you think i could do to improve these photographs or the make-up process?

Make-Up Session 2

The second Make-up session differed from our first as problems with getting my previous model meant  I had to get a replacement who looked slightly similar.

This time, the make-up session was a success and we were able to create very interesting work as well as establishing what my character would look like in greater detail.