Unit 2 Evaluation

Brief
The exam board set a brief using the theme "Covert and Obscured" which meant being concealed and hidden. I first researched the meaning of these words in depth and created mind maps which helped me to find out what the themes could inspire me to think of. I also came up with three subject matter sheets and wrote different Graphic products underneath to come up with the best ideas for the exam. From the main brief I found the word silhouettes which enabled me to use shadows and outlines to create the theme "covert and obscured".  I chose the subject matter of fairy tales. I focused on looking at the Disney fairy tales because there is a vast variety of resources used, such as books, films and pictures, compared to fairy tales like The Three Little Pigs. I wanted to use a Zine as the graphics product because it was one of my favourite things to do and make in Unit 1. I made mood boards using Pinterest and looked different books like Rob Ryans - A sky full of kindness to find suitable images for all three of these main starting points. I took observational photographs of my things that would be in Disney movies in real life and then drew from the photographs. I also did a photoshoot using the fairytale Little Red Riding Hood. Then I started to look at the conventions of  zine so that I knew more about what  would have to include. I experiemented using my own cut out images like Rob Ryan's work to make shadows, I used watercolour to make a silhouette of colour, polysterene block printing, photoshop shadow work, and using photoshop to make things look handcut. When drafting I used line drawings and used lots of little items that were included in each story. For my final drafting I made a dummy book which I used in the exam.For the final piece I created a hand cut and block printed zine using the fairy tales from the disney movies.

A Piece That Has Been Influenced By Another Artist/Designer
 I chose Laura Barratt as my artist because her work is very inspirational. She uses intricate lines and detail to create an amazing silhouette of fairytales. She does this by hand cutting paper with a craft knife. However as a first attempt I used sharpies and fineliners to create the images because its very difficult to hand cut something so delicate and detailed. From her work I realised how important background images and borders are when using silhouettes like the ivy around the border. The more detail that goes into a hand cut piece, the better it looks.


A Piece Where I Have Experimented With Different Processes.

When looking at different fonts I experimented by using collage, paint, alphabetti spagetti spaghetti, drawing hands in the shape of letters, a whole page of different shapes and sizes, and colours.

On the whole page of different ones I took risks by just doing each one by either copying or just coming out of my head. I also didn't know if the collage one would work or it would all come apart. I used a variety of different resources to create these fonts to develop my ideas however I didn't use any on my final piece because not all zines include fonts and 
 lettering. The limitations show when you're doing photographs and you can only find certain letters, I would have liked to do more experimentation on these using trees and household objects. 

 
  I also used a picture from pinterest which had a girl with shadowing over her face, so i created my own piece using photoshop from shadows I had taken and shadows/patterns from google. I also used my own cut outs to create shadows of the thing I had made. The risks were that I didn't have enough light or darkness to do the shadow or it wasn't the right size. Also when making the shadows with my own cut outs you had to position them so that they weren't blurry and the right size by bringing the image closer or further away from the light source. I took photographs of silhouettes and shadows to make the objects contre-jour. This was a really effective way of making the silhouettes, i then did line drawings from these photographs. I also took silhouettes over a lake when the light was behind the town and the trees, this is really effective because there is a lot of colour coming from the sunset/sun and the lake with the dark contrast of the town silhouette.

 A Piece That Needed Refining Over A Period Of Time.

When it came to my final piece I needed to choose what experiment/technique I was going to use and which Disney films I was going to look at in more detail to decide what my Zine was going to be about. I chose my hand cut silhouettes to use as the main technique along with a bit of polyseterene block printing. I felt like I didn't have a lot of variety in my experiements so I tried block printing and hand cut craft knife images. I also tried experimenting with photoshop to see if it would be more effective if I used photoshop to create my silhouettes. Each technique took its own refining to get it perfect for example on the left the print looks better sometimes compared to the other.With the photo edits it depended on how much detail and how many different colours you wanted on the image to how it looked. The hand cut silhouettees needed more detail in each one to look more effective and interesting otherwise it was boring to look at a simple shape.


My Final Piece

My final piece linked with two other artists - Olly Moss who creates silhouettes of famous disney character faces and Laura Barratt who creates fairytale silhouettes. I thought the way the Disney characters came out looked good but I think that some were lacking detail and character compared to the others. If I did it again I think i would add colour through paint and I would have used more of my own observational drawings compared to the original disney characters. I was influenced by the artist Laura Barratt because she showed me how important detail and boarders to the picture was. I also think that layers make it more interesting to the eye because of the 3D effect. If I were to do it again I would have looked a bit more into spray painting and painting with colour like the copy of the watercolour pinterest image I did. I think for my final I would have done a different technique because it was so time consuming which left me hardly any time to assemble it all together. It was also alot of effort to cut each piece exactly right and so it looked exactly like the character. However by doing the zine as my final piece I've learnt so much about the technique and been inspired by other artists that I haven't heard of before. I found the copy images from pinterest very effective and I would deffinately use them if I were to do this exam again.