Shadow Puppets

Just a short post to show development with technique and confidence entering the Final Major Project. Although the photographs above are pretty bad and the actual paintings are still in progress my ability to illustrate shadow and detail with watercolour paints has progressed over the past year.

Final Major Project Part One: S. E. Hinton

"The original teenage rebel story" by S. E. Hinton, The Outsiders, is a fictional story that focuses on two rival groups of young adults divided by their socioeconomic status. Set in Tulsa, Oklahoma (although never actually stated in the book) and written by Hinton when she was 16 herself, the book is intended for teenagers of the same age who can relate to different elements of the story. Struggle between class and 'coming of age' are two main divides within the story, with loyalty, honor and friendship being under-pining themes. Penguin and Puffin's most recent competition brief was to re-design the entire cover for the Puffin Teenage publication of The Outsiders; front, back and spine. The story was a favourite of mine from school as the characters were accessible, the book contained such strong imagery and the story had that rebellious escapism portraying gang culture and under-age smoking.

I wanted to focus on symbols that represent scenes or themes within the story; such as switchblades, cars, the greaser hairstyle and matches along with the recurring motifs of eyes and use of literature.

Edits from sketchbook.

Sense of place was particularly important for this project as I've never set foot in America let alone witnessed the landscapes and culture of Oklahoma, I had to find enough visual and written material to enable a make-shift experience. In order to test colour schemes, texture and background I needed to connect as closely as possible to the place and the theme.

Test image for background image, colour scheme and over-lay drawing.

I lend towards characters, animals and objects rather than landscapes or abstract work so it was difficult to focus on working on the background without any idea of how I would tie the foreground together but the ethos of producing as much quality work as possible without the focus of the end result did work in my favour. Not only did i end up with two full sketchbooks but the backgrounds I produced actually work a whole lot better separately and combined than when I work on a piece as a whole.

Experimental background in progress.

I'll make sure to create another post at the end of the year with updates from this project, final piece and extra sketchbook work focused on the foreground. Keep your eyes peeled.