Assignment Four
Building Stories
Zine sketchbook inspiration:
This assignment asks for the creation of a complete foldy zine sketchbook. I started by taking a look at different examples of this style of sketchbook and how I could create one.
- The sketches are separated into days and each day is different. A different feel, tone, emotion, with mixed media sketches. I like how each page communicates something entirely different. However I could also change this to ensure that there is fluidity throughout the sequences, even if there was a continuation of just one thing, something similar in each sketch or a running theme that forms just part of the sketch on each page would add a visual chord.
- I like the rougher, looser ink portrait sketch that reflects the feeling of being trapped. The way this sketch has bee drawn is a reflection of the emotion attached to it. Something of significance to note in order to communicate emotion throughout a story.
- The concealed notes with the hidden envelope are a good way of explaining each sketch with words to the viewer once they find the messages. And if they don't, they are left to interpret each drawing for themselves, which could be more interesting. I could include both noticeable and concealed messages within my sequences or certainly take this into consideration whilst choosing how I place words into the sketchbook.
These were the notes given by my tutor in response to assignment one. Of particular interest to me before I start wok on this assignment is the advice to respond to physical sensations and every day moments in nature.
"You show quicker looser drawings alongside more focused detailed observations. I enjoy the inclusion of the envelope in order to conceal. Extend this project by responding to physical sensations :everyday moments in nature ; changes in light, weather or seasons. You might draw everyday sounds you hear and reflect upon how you describe these through marks. Start by making a mind map to explore and refine ideas. Talk about why you have chosen these moments to draw, what it is you most enjoy about drawing, which materials have you enjoyed & why. What has this spurred you on to do now? Add in research, how have other artists explored the theme of the 'everyday', what can your observations on them contribute to your own project".
Research into story structures - Research task 4.3: https://naomianillustrationsketchbook.blogspot.com/2021/08/task-4_31.html
I would like to develop these sketchbook pages into a short story. The pages are taken from exercise 4.3 'Conversation with pictures - Interpretation'.
https://naomianillustrationsketchbook.blogspot.com/2021/08/blog-post_90.html
My sketchbook throughout this part has been heavily inspired by the colours, nature and creatures I discovered during my sketchbook time at 'The Butterfly Farm'.
I would like to continue to use the nature and creatures that I observed throughout a series of sequences that work through what happens next to my male figure and the goldfish in the bowl.
As I worked through exercise 4.3, I identified through the sketches and words placed within the sketch that both the man and the goldfish feel trapped within their lives. Yet the sun is shining outside, the man cannot see this. I'd love to explore their lives and go on a short journey of discovery with the characters here.
Also for exercise 4.4 I revisited the idea of the fish and the water lily to create a short sequence, I will also look to move this idea forward.
Exercise 4.3
Exercise 4.4
Research:
David Hockney
A collection of ipad drawings that explore the change of seasons from the window of his home in Yorkshire. Ipad drawings allowed for the opportunity for Hockney to make broad lines filled with vibrant colour from any place within his home, even before the day had begun. Described as a poetic collection of works that captures fleeting moments of the outside.
As I am starting this process with the idea of the male figure and goldfish in the window, I would like to create a world on the outside, a world that they are missing out on.
In Hockney's work the clues of the season are found in the focal point of the drawing, the bare Winter tree white with show, the raindrops on the window pane, the pink flowers and green leaves of the plants. Clues of the time of day and weather conditions are also felt through the colour of the sky. On the rainy day the sky is a lilac purple, moody. Beautifully, the colour of the lilac in the window compliments this perfectly, adding that poetry. On the winter day the sky is a cold and clear blue.
What could I bring to my sequences?
Vibrancy in colour of the outside.
Clues of the weather conditions using colour, plants, marks on the pane of the glass.
Communicate the time of day with the colour of the sky.
Add a mood to the drawing, using colour, the sky and visual clues.
A different view out of the window whenever a window is used.
Create a scene in itself, a scene within a scene with the window acting as a border.
Colour in the outside of the window, this could add a symmetry or a contrast between what is going on the outside and the inside.
'Open Window, Collioure' 1905
Oil on canvas
An explosion of colour, a small, intense snapshot.
The windows open inwards to reveal boats docked in the harbour. There are layered clouds in the sky with hints of blue, greys and pinks. The layers create movement in the sky and a heaviness that guides the viewer into the distance.
The sea is painted in in line like blocks, the same colour as the sky, just applied in different strokes. The colours create a similar poetry as Hockney's window collection.
The texture of marks change again the closer the viewer gets to the window. The sand and pots have been created in small blots of colour, the addition of red adds heat and intensity. A contrast to the pale tones of the sky and the sea. Perhaps they could be Chilli plants.
Matisse offers the viewer an invitation in this painting. But rather that of an invitation into his home, it is a welcome into a portal like doorway to a small town on the Mediterranean coast of France.
What could I bring to my work?
Changes in marks and textures to depict the outside.
A poetry in colour.
Presenting the outside as the inside, an invitation.
Vibrancy and intensity in a small space of opportunity.
Brainstorm:
Key words: Dark clouds, heavy rain, sadness, explore, a new world, sun, break free, release, run, break away.
1. Statis - The 'normal world' or everyday scenario. Introduce the everyday scenario in which the story is set/Introduce your character in their unsuspecting situation.
Ben stands at the skink washing up his lunchtime dishes. It is always raining. Life doesn't ever change.
Fish watches Ben through his goldfish bowl. Fish knows the rain won't stop for Ben until he notices that the rain is only on the inside, the sun is shining brightly on the outside, but Ben just can't see that.
2. Trigger - Provide a catalyst to start the story moving away from what is normal and fine towards a problem (which is something often beyond control).
Fish musters all of his might to speak to Ben.
He rubs the word "Outside" on the side of his bowl which faintly shows through the condensation on the outside. Not quite enough for Ben to hear through the rain, Fish then jumps as high as he can and splashes back into the water, stealing Ben's attention.
3. Quest - Your trigger should result in a quest. This image should define the goal of the story and add some tension.
Ben takes Fish out of the goldfish bowl and carefully places him into a teacup. Ben and Fish look out of the window together. Ben hadn't noticed before how bright the sky was and how big the run looked in the sky. The rain hasn't stopped on the inside for such a long time.
Should they both free themselves and explore the outside? Or stay with what they know forever...
4. A surprise- Introduce turns in the story which show the elements which might get in the way of the quest and your characters response. These should include pleasant events, obstacles, complications or trouble for your hero.
A wind of change blows the kitchen door open.
Ben and Fish venture outside and start to explore their surroundings.
They see beautiful flowers that grow up towards the sun, so different to Ben's tulips in the kitchen window that stoop downwards, beaten by the rain.
The find curious creatures hanging from the branches, butterfly pupa of green and yellow.
Ben and Fish hear bird song, they look up towards the sky to see wings of birds and also colourful butterflies. Fish jumps from his bowl with joy. Ben can see how happy Fish is feeling here, this makes Ben worry that Fish is unhappy at home. Ben pulls Fish inwards, starting to fear he is losing him. Fish has been Ben's only company for such a long time now...
5. A critical choice/a reaction - The hero makes a crucial or critical decision about how they will respond.
Ben wonders whether he should run home with Fish and shut the door, safe in the rain that they know. Or should he carry on exploring, embracing this journey?
Ben and Fish continue to walk and arrive at a tropical lake. There are pink water lilies that decorate the water. Tall trees that line the lake.
Large Koi swim towards Ben and Fish. Fish has never met another fish before, his eyes widen at the sight of friends. Ben can see how much Fish would like to join the Koi in the lake. Ben realises how much he has missed friends.
6. The climax - The image should be a penultimate cliffhanger before we discover whether the quest has been a success.
Ben and Fish sit on the bank of the lake.
Feeling the suns heat, Ben paddles his toes in the water. He knows he should let Fish swim free. Ben is reluctant and fearful, he doesn't want to lose Fish as they have shared a trapped life together. They site in thought together whilst the Koi swim around Ben's feet. All of their senses are stimulated by life at the lake.
7. The reversal - The goals have been changed. The hero has been changed by the experience and has transformed.
Ben loves the feel of the water on his skin. The sensation of heat on his face from the sun. The rain has stopped. Fish is happy and and he should be free, and so is Ben. Ben leans forwards and pours the teacup into the water.
8/ The resolution - A return to a new status quo/everyday scenario.
Ben returns home with the teacup leaving Fish in the lake. The sunshine follows him into his house. Ben vows to visit the lake everyday to see Fish, but also to remain a part of the outside.
Storyboard thumbnails:
Here I work with a pencil to storyboard ideas for my short story sequence, all in all 10 thumbnails were created. However, I would like to reduce this to the 8 pages as advised.
The thumbnails work through the stages of statis and the story for each stage. We start with Ben at the kitchen sink and end with Fish being set free in the water.
Building the zine sketchbook:
I firstly want to create the open window landscape that Henri Matisse and David Hockney achieved in my research. I would like the visual poetry in colour as Hockney's work has been described.
To do this I take the key elements of the story: The rain, the sun, the outside and I set about how I think they would look on the page.
I work on a sketchbook page with mixed media, pastel, pen, watercolour and coloured pencils. I draw the rain cloud in the different media and also different colours to see what happens.
The cloud looks aggressive and stark in the black pen, yet gentle and poetic in the purple watercolour. It is a rain cloud and it is sorrowful and heavy, yet I do want it to appear beautiful and expressive. Emotions are the ultimate in expression and I want to communicate this.
The sun in pastel also has the same gently effect, big and bright yet subtle also, an expression of the happiness outside.
I revisit my sketchbook to look for the window landscape. As I have collected a number of pages of colour, nature, creatures and bright landscapes, I look for the landscape that Fish can see outside of the window.
Exercise 4.1 Description and Depiction
This scene is bright and tropical exciting and full of life and would be an exciting scene to see outside. However I used mixed media to create this and as a sketch, I feel it is too rigid to display the visual poetry and expressive feeling I would like to achieve. It is a representational drawing and I would like to move this on and into fictional place.
I decide to rework the landscape but this time using the pastel that I enjoyed whilst experimenting. I redraw the landscape, this time also adding the sun to the top of the page, an integral element to the story. This is now a fictional landscape, inspired by the descriptive landscape above.
As well as adding the sun, the landscape has been softened with the pastel. The trees line the lake but in a softer way. The sky is filled with butterflies, as written in words in my sketchbook. The lake filled with fish, as written in my sketchbook taken at The Butterfly Farm. Descriptive information I had previously collected, used now in a fictional way.
I then colour photo copy this page to make duplicates. I hope this will be a resourceful way of building each page. The sun is a running theme and integral to the story. Multiplied, the sun looks beautiful and poetic.
I also do the same for the purple watercolour rain cloud. I make duplicates as a resource. This will also help with continuity.
I can see a visual language forming here as already the rain and the sun, produced in different media are complimenting each other. Their tones are pleasing. They represent different emotions but so appear visually pleasing alongside each other on the page. They are soft and large, enticing and impossible for the viewer to miss hopefully.
Encouraged so far, I return again to my sketchbook to look for other pages as I can use as a resource. I again make colour copies of these. When Ben and Fish venture outside, they find colours, plants and curious creatures. All inspired by my findings from exercise 4.0 'Fill it up fast'.
Now with a number of pages to hand, I begin to look at how I can create the zine sketchbook. The most obvious way at this point would be to cut up and create a collage on each page.
I test cutting up the elements to see how they fit together.
I start to draw in my thumbnail ideas, creating the pages of the zine. I start with pencil however I am discouraged with how these lines appear on the page. The pencil is controllable and offers precision. However so far I have been enjoying the expressive visual language of the colours on the page. The sequence is about a man who has become trapped indoors with his sadness. The purple and delicate raincloud communicates this, the giant pastel orange sun communicated the warmth of the outside. However I'm worried that a lined drawing will lose this language.
I ask my husband to model some of the poses that I need as visual information to build the sequence to help with my sketches. I document the positions in quick sketches using a brown coloured pencil and also photos that I will refer back to:
As an experiment I draw out one of the scenes using the purple watercolour of the rain cloud. There is less control here, however it is expressive and I like this. It is like a continuation of the cloud, throughout the page. A continuation of the visual language. It also makes the landscape outside so much brighter, it brings an urgency and intensity to the window.
I start to think about the placement of words on the page. The sequence is a short story and I do think that words will help the sketchbook. I don't think all of the words of the plan I have for statis are required for each page, but I look to reduce the words needed and play around with how they appear on the page. The words read as a book so I type the words and cut them out with the rest of the collage and start laying them out on the pages.
I work on all 8 pages of the sketchbook.
The sun is used as the landscape on each page, the running theme and an expression of a better life outside.
The purple continues as a running theme of the rain and unhappiness felt whilst trapped on the inside.
With each page, have cut up the elements to form the story.
To tidy up the end result, I will then photocopy each collaged page.
Final zine sketchbook:
Reflection:
This has been a huge expanse of my imagination. What started as representational drawing of male figure stood at the sink on a page in my sketchbook, then expanded to 4.3 and now to a short sequence. This has been a confidence boost. How just a seed, a starting point can be structured using statis to create a story.
The steps of statis have acted as a structure and a fail safe, I knew what I needed to set out and by following the steps are story has been created.
What went well?
Research into an open window was integral in focussing on what life could be like on the outside for Ben and Fish. The historical work of Matisse, and the contemporary Ipad drawings of Hockney presented a way of capturing a landscape that could act as an emotional narrative throughout the story.
I tried to use a visual language to communicate emotion. The purple of the rain cloud to convey sadness. The cloud is subtle, gentle, always there but not too heavy. It then felt like a natural step to draw the rest of the scene in the same purple. A continuation of the narrative.
The outside landscape contrasts against this sadness. In pastel the sun is large, bright and almost billowing. A desperate messenger trying to break though the window. The bright orange and the gentle purple visually compliment each other too. I had inspired to capture a little of the visual poetry Hockney had achieved, I feel a step towards this has been made.
By colour copying the sketches, this allowed a resourceful way to build the sketchbook and also a continuation of the visual language and narrative. Also by recycling representational sketches from my sketchbook also added the opportunity to use elements in a different way. By reworking the landscape I was able to build the pages using new material, and previous.
I like the characters of Ben and Fish. They are entirely fictional, however go together well. Their story could continue, there is promise there.
I loved the organic growth of the pages, the visual language of emotion, the expressive way the drawings loosely flowed with the purple watercolour, the pages weren't bound with lines.
What were the challenges?
Building the page bought a number of challenges. I knew the story of my sequence and had mapped this out in a storyboard, however when it came to the practice I did have to adapt the pages as I cut the elements together, making changes where things didn't quite fit. Changing the position of Fish to ensure he was facing the right way to be noticed on the page. It was however a flexible way of working as once I had all components cut up, I was able to play with the layout.
I don't like how the character of Ben appears different on the pages, his appearance changes and I struggled with his continuation. More development of him would be productive. To practice keeping the character the same visually, I need to learn this ability. Later I did work on this more cartoon like version of Ben that I much preferred:
I wanted to include words on the page as a short story had been created. I like the way the words appear in strips, they are easy to read and sit nicely on the page, with the appearance of book pages. However I feel the weakness here is that I didn't include the entire story, nervous of taking up too much of the page and therefore covering the sketches. More time should be spent planning out the layout.
I was unsure how to bind the pages to create a foldy zine. I didn't want to bind the pages too tightly as the whole point of the story is to find freedom by the end. I loosely collected the pages together in a bow.
Reflect in your learning log about what you learned and enjoyed most from the part of the course and what you might use in the next section where you will choose the direction of your final assignment.
I loved filling the sketchbook pages fast. Collecting information. The pages of my sketchbook are interesting, full of details. I felt more free with my sketching and can feel a boost in confidence. I've also enjoyed working with mixed media throughout the pages, more experimental.
Throughout part 4 there has been a running theme of colour and content, all inspired by the information that I collected at the beginning during my time at The Butterfly Farm. I didn't think I would continue to use this information throughout, this has been organic. But it shows how important that time and information gathering has been.
I would like keep pushing with expressing an emotional visual language for part 5.
I would like to expand on my imagination further as this has been a freeing exercise for me, as well as Ben and Fish.
How did you find the process of moving from descriptive drawings towards fictional narratives?
A fantastic learning curve and expanse of my imagination. The information I gathered when sketching my partner at the sink at the time was just an isolated drawing. At the time of drawing I had no idea that that would be the very starting point of a short story.
To develop a fictional narrative has been an area of growth, I've enjoyed learning the steps of statis and I have benefited from the results of using this tool.
We talked about having conversations with previous illustrations, which of the illustrators mentioned in this sections work did you have most dialogue with?
My research into Brandon J Wallace was been crucial for learning how to storyboard. He not only positions the page but he also expresses emotion in his thumbnails, he communicates the visual language of the scene which adds depth and meaning. This has stayed with me and I hope to keep expanding and developing my ability to express more than just a drawings.
Reference:
Hockney, D
https://www.hockney.com/index.php/works/digital/ipad
www.houseofillustration.org.uk
Matisse, H (1905) 'Open Window, Collioure'
Stobart, J (2011) Extraordinary Sketchbooks
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