Initially, I had the idea of doing a set of silkscreen prints that were exquisite corpses, comprised of figures, carvings and landscapes. However I feel that I have already covered the exquisite corpse aspect and I wanted to push myself and try and achieve a set of prints with original and interesting compositions that had high levels of drawing and print skill with the courage of large areas of negative space. I sometimes have a tendency to fill a compositions with many figures and objects, however, taking what I have learnt from my authorship unit; less is more.
(Below) are my preliminary roughs for the original idea I had of doing exquisite corpse silkscreen prints.
I want my final outcome to be a set of prints that show an icy, tundra-esque and barren landscape with the presence of transient/transparent ghosts and spectres of past explorers lost to the environment, and the presence of these Inuit transformation spirit Totems.
I also researched some of my favourite compositions from the artists that I have looked at for this unit. I simplified the compositions by picking out the key elements of the composition such as the figures, horizon points and areas of negative space.
During my research of artist references on the Tate website, I came across this magnificent quadtych by Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden entitled: The Studio at 3 Wesley Place (1981-2) I really enjoy the idea of this set of drawings representing a location at different points of the day/in different scenarios. I especially admire the first piece entitled: The Studio at 3 Wesley Place in the dark (iv) and illuminated by an explosion nearby (VI) The long cast shadows, the luminosity of the image and the highlights on the figures and objects exposed to the light. The simple colour palette of the green, blue and black work extremely well too. I particularly love the concoction of painterly washes and more intricate drawings that work together extremely well. This set of drawings has greatly inspired me and has provoked me to now consider my final outcome as a set or triptych of prints that convey the atmosphere of an arctic expedition at different points of the day.
I have chosen what characters and figures I want in my landscapes, but I came to a halt in creativity when considering how to capture and draw an original and interesting landscape/environment.
I concluded that the best and most realistic/personal way would be to draw the incredible landscapes from my Norway trek back when I was in year 9. I luckily found them in the deep realms of an old Trek messenger chat. They are perfect. Not only are they original and my own, but they also contain fantastic focal points and areas of negative space that implicate huge expanses of snow and ice.
(Below) Here are some charcoal roughs on newsprint of me mapping out the best, most visually captivating landscapes from these photos.
(Below) Here are the three best and most interesting landscapes and areas of terrain that I feel would work perfectly for illustrating a snowy Arctic abyss.
(Below) Here are the finalised charcoal drawings scanned in. I am extremely pleased with how they look and I am excited to start playing around with placement of figures.
In an ideal world, I would have printed my totem figures and trek people out on a printer in order to cut and collage them with the landscapes. However I found that photoshop worked well and allowed me to quickly generate some different, compelling compositions.
(above) A criticism of these ones are that some of the drawings are not matching other drawings. There are some figures such as the trekker with binoculars that are too roughly drawn and don't exhibit the high level of drawing that I want to display. In addition, I have been lazy in that I have repeated a couple of these roughly drawn figures on separate compositions. To resolve this, I have chosen to include some more detailed trek characters from some of my preliminary ink drawings. (Below)
(Below) Here are my final compositions for my triptych print set
(Below) Here is how I produced the drop shadow layers for my silkscreen compositions.
I loaded a full sized image of one of the compositions. Then I covered the screen over with a sheet of acetate to protect the computer screen from ink that may seep through or spill through the paper. I then layered over the acetate and attached a semi-transparent piece of paper and with ink, drew where I wanted the drop shadows to be and where I felt that they would fall - taking into account the source of light and size of the totems and characters that were producing the shadows. I also took into consideration the topography/terrain that the shadows were being cast upon.
I then scanned these ink drawings into photoshop and altered them to make them into areas of solid flat colour to properly mimic a drop shadow. This means that it will print as a crisp and flat layer of solid colour when printed via silkscreen rather than printing as a layer of textured colour - Just like the drop shadows in Moholy Nagy's work. (as the ink drawing had produced areas of pooling and texture).
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