While making the images for the first two Chinese fairy tales I am illustrating (The Bird With Nine Heads & The Cave Of Beasts) I became quite disillusioned and unhappy with the way I was working. I was making elements using different techniques and then arranging them on photoshop, the lino cut bird and sword from my recent post are an example of the lino cut elements, and then as you can see from the images in this post, they became part of a larger image using other elements such as illustrator shapes and linework.
For some reason, I would always be happy with the individual elements, but then when I arranged them in photoshop, I would never be happy with the image as a whole. I struggled to find out why, I thought it was because there was several different techniques included, but then upon reflection, I think the techniques sit fairly well together. There was several other things going round in my head as to why I wasn't happy with the images and I just couldn't put my finger on it. It was especially strange as I had really been proud of my paradise lost images that combined different techniques. Then it struck me that the Paradise Lost images were very simple in their creation, I would make a collograph, and then do some separate linework, and place it over the top in photoshop. However with the Chinese fairy tale images, I was using several different methods and I think it was just too much, I think they were competing for my attention and even though some elements sat nicely together, they were just not working as a whole.
So while I was watching a video on Lino cut illustrator Jake Blanchard, I decided to take on the challenge of doing all my images in Lino cut. This way, the most I would be doing digitally would be to drop some line work in (as with the PL images), and so hopefully I would regain what was making those images work both as illustrations, and work for me as a practitioner.
So as I said, included here are my first couple of illustrations and maybe you can see for yourself what I'm talking about, or maybe it wont make any sense!
Watch this space for upcoming posts regarding my recent visit to London with college and for new roughs for my Lino cut images!
No comments:
Post a Comment