Work in Progress

A work in progress meeting is when a group of us are put together with a tutor. We then have to each present our work so far to the group. We are given feedback from the tutors and each other.

Jonny and Louise we taking our group today. They both thought that my work was getting a bit repetitive. Which I agree, there's a lot of women, in blue ink. I need, really, to get experimenting with the stitching, and etching. Louise also said she'd like to see me placing the characters into more of a scene. I agree with this too. I draw the women mostly unfinished or floating on a white page. I think this is mainly because when I draw these images of the women and I'm pleased with them, I'm then hesitant to do anything else to it in case I ruin it. I do like the overall look of these images, but for this project, including some sort of background would support my work. Jonny also said to us all that we may like to go for finished images now, so that we have plenty of time to figure out what works or not ect.

Louise suggested that I work on larger paper to draw my bird women, to really get into it and to be able to compare them easily. I think this will also help me to not be so precious. She also suggested i make my bird women scarier. I was planning on doing this, so that it refers to the nature of Carter's stories. Ive been thinking about using storks for the bird women. They will then refer to the motherly idea of a stork and baby. But the storks long beak is more sinister than the ones i've been drawing. It also looks sharp and in the shape of scissors. This can relate to the step mum ordering her daughters to cut off their own feet!

I've been considering backgrounds. I've gone back to some of my images (that I have already uploaded on here) and added simple suggestions of trees in a very pale, watered down ink. This creates more depth to the image and a suggestion of where the character is. I quite like the simplicity or subtlety of this... 

(I like the branch legs too)

I also think that the images that are floating, wouldn't look too bad on a simple coloured background. for example if I took an image like this...

...and put in a background colour on photoshop, like I've done for a previous project image below...

Or I've been looking at what Rego's etchings and the backgrounds within them. Adding scenes like these can allow me to use more symbolism and create a more intense image.

Or, id quite like to produce more back grounds like these images by Seiko Kato and julie Verhoeven 

Kato

Verhoeven

this can be done by just incorporating various imagery from throughout my sketchbook into one image. This will allow for the use of more symbolism and make my illustration more interesting as it will have more to look at!... I've almost done it here (below) but the image can be added to.

Here are a few sketches of scenery i quickly played with today 

the girl above has tree root-like legs which i quite like the idea of. This again symbolises the connection with her dead mother, the tree which allows the return of her mother and Ashputtle's mourning.