Pear and Rat Hair Colour Iteration and Feedback.

After getting done with choosing a hairstyle I wanted to experiment with hair colours. As I mentioned in my previous post I wanted hair colours that would have been around at the time the characters are supposed to be from, and hair colours that would work with the theme and phobias.

For the Pear I looked online to find out what colours would have been available and found this info

I was quite surprised by this as I didn't realise they had access to so many different colours, I guess the wig makers would get plants and other such materials to create the odd colours. I used this information to create my colour iteration and looked for feedback.

two out of the three people chose 2, I was really keen on the pink hair but I don't think it would have worked as well as, I was happy with the choosing of 2 though as the pale blue was one of the colours I had selected with my colour palette, it also looks good against the coppers and yellows of the cogs and clock-pieces. So the final image of the head looks like this.

And now for the Rat hair. As I said in the previous post, I wanted colours that both represented the Elizabethan fashion for red hair and the colours of rat fur. I also went with a greyed one as if the stress of the torture made her hair turn grey.

Again two of the three people chose 2, this works for me because its sort of a mix of the base and four, it also doesn't wash out the buboes too much, I think having the red hair wouldn't have worked as well because it would have been too much red and the buboes just kind of merge in with the hair colour. This is the final head of the Rat Torture lady.

I really love how all the heads came out, even though the time periods are quite near to each other, all three look entirely different, one of my biggest concerns was that I would end up with three characters who looked similar. Now onto the clothing!

Anatomy Post 2

I completely forgot to upload the anatomy workshop images I took of the progress I am making with my model. We've had our last anatomy lecture now and I'm really going to miss them, I've learnt so much and Ron has been an amazing tutor, however we still have the model to finish and we'll be working more on it all day this coming Friday. I realised a few people have been adding their anatomy lecture notes to their blogs ... mine are a little too scruffy and only I can just about read them so I think I'll just keep them to myself, they will be very useful though!

I have progressed more with this model but I forgot to take pictures so I will make another post after the Friday session.

Starting work on character face iteration (along with feedback).

Now I've had an experiment with values and whatnot I can begin concepting what my three ladies are going to look like. The aim with them is to get three very different looking pieces so visually they will have different faces which should help me try and combat my weakness of 'same face' drawing, all my characters tend to look the same and this is something I want to avoid.

Each character has a facial trait that relates back to their time periods or torture devices. The Iron Maiden will have a metal mask covering so won't have hair which will be incorporated into the mask design. Rat Torture will try and appear as though the orginal woman fused with the rats that killed her so she will end up with a long thin face, her ears will stick out more and her features will be rat like with a long nose, beady eyes and if showing her front teeth will be rat-like. Pear of Anguish is going to be working along with the anorexic appearance to go with the body, her eyes are large and sunken in, her cheeks hollow and her skin very pale, this will be covered with makeup heavilly to hide the waxiness of the skin and cover up the rip marks from being tortured, this rip will be 'mended' to help hold the jaw together.

I had a lot of fun with these, I normally find iteration quite a chore, and Iron Maiden was particularly the hardest for me to actually get the courage to start on, I think the last of humanity in the face was what made it so difficult but once I started it was hard to stick to just 6 versions because I was having so much fun!

After compiling all these iteration pieces I went to our GAD facebook group and my personal facebook page looking for feedback, the facebook group as always gave very little in the way of feedback, with so many people I was hoping for a bit more to assess which ones work best so that was a little dissapointing! Here are the results.

However I feel I have a fair amount of feedback to go on and can take this and carry it forward to working on hair for the rat and pear characters and then onto clothing!

Starting the creative journey.

I seem to get along with doing these weekly posts, as two week events, especially at the moment with life being so hectic. In the few weeks coming I will attempt to make time and sit myself down and get something done. In this regard I am my own worst enemy with forcing my brain to sit and just write.

So ahead with the post, sipping a cool glass of OJ I sat and looked through my research images and I can totally agree with the feedback I got from Nigel, there is just so much, so many images! The start of this creative journey can only begin with a clean out and a reshuffle. I need to select a few relevant images for each torture device and each inspiring image. So out of like 300 images I will get around 40/50 in total, still a lot but I do like to have a selection. I am aiming to have just enough to start my Silhouettes and values,

Pear of Anguish: Anjou

Iron Maiden: Claustrum

Rat Torture: Bubónica

100 Silhouettes

Now I have my phobias and my devices settled I can begin my creative process after like a month of
not being able to do the simplest thing art wise.

I normally don't keep things in mind when doing my silhouettes but this time I kept the devices in mind to help me visualise the characters outfits. I aimed for 60, but I ended up with 100. Out of these I will get choose my favourites that I feel represent the characters the best.

Whilst doing these I found a really interesting brush and I ended up using that the most. Now comes the hard part .... Choosing a favourite! We all know how good I am with choices!

Humanised phobias.

I started looking to artists who had used phobias in their work to understand how I can add them to my humanised versions of the torture devices, I came across these pieces by artist John Plato Vassocopoulo

1931’s Phobia was created with the assistance of noted psychoanalyst Henry Stack Sullivan, after a friend of the illustrator had a nervous breakdown. The first lines of the book began with “I must began by apologizing. I am not a psychiatrist”. Yet, despite the unconventional depictions of man’s fear, the limited edition publication became a turning point in John Vassos career. He never published another book of illustrations, but his further years, spent doing works of graphic, industrial design and occasional artpieces, had a conceptual basis on that series of 24 plates. 

The author of  Codex 99, the blog that originally published the following images, describe Vassos’s depiction of Mechanophobia (fear of machinery) in this way: “The illustration – part art nouveau, part art deco and part German expressionism – shows not only a terror of machines but captures more generally the growing unease with the urbanism and industrialization of the early 20th century (a recurrent theme in much of Vassos’ work)".

The illustrations were printed using the Knudson lithographic process, patented in 1915 by the Danish Hugo Knudson and a direct fore- runner of the modern halftone.

Mechanophobia (fear of machinery)

 

Acrophobia – fear of high places

Claustrophobia – fear of enclosed spaces

Astrophobia – fear of storms

Zoophobia – fear of animals

Potamophobia – fear of running water

Climacophobia – fear of falling down stairs

Batophobia – fear of falling objects

Dromophobia – fear of crossing the street

Monophobia – fear of being alone

Phagophobia – fear of swallowing

Syphilophobia – fear of syphilis

Pantophobia – fear of everything

Aichmophobia - fear of Sharp and Pointed Objects

I found these rather chilling, the greyscale adds to the mood and each piece depicts each phobia really well. In particular the claustrophobia image, the feeling of tightness is obvious. Aichmophobia is also really well done. The bodies being pierced with the scissors and the fencing combined with the lack of facial expression is really creepy.