Article brief development

Development of Article Brief

I started my design process by highlighting my article for all the different animals included and then drew them. This is because I have somehow avoided drawing animals forever! These turned out to be loose drawings, loosely painted (watercolour) but yes they were drawn from reference because at current it is important to the way I work. 

I think my favourite of these drawings is the wild boar. He has definitely got a character and I like the suggestions of the hair but also the brush strokes underneath.

Roughs

Firstly I did a few quick thumbnail sketches just to get some ideas down on paper before I moved onto making the larger images.

From the article I got a general gist of what it was trying to say but because my brain works a bit crazy I looked at the imagery portrayed in each paragraph (jumping around) and wanted to create an image to represent this. Under each of the roughs I have put the quote which illustrates my inspiration.

At this point I didn't manage to create more designs for the portrait brief-partly because I ran out of paragraphs to visualise but more honestly because I got distracted with my collage...

I have chosen these 3 designs to be my ultimate:

Collage!

One night at about 3 in the morning I had the idea that I must collage! I had some images already made of fish and lobsters and just wanted to collage! I went into uni and whilst everyone was doing their roughs I just got side-tracked with my collaging. However whilst i was making these mock ups it totally slipped my mind to keep them to the proportions of the brief so I need to refigure that out.

This is definitely a direction I wish to pursue with this project. However since re-reading the brief i have discovered that I must limit my colours to 2. 

I have decided which 3 images I would like to make however 2 of them are collage based and the other is print so if possible I need make them into a trip-tage. A possibility for this is them all using the same colour palette if possible to bind them as they are different mediums. Also the 3rd design communicates in a different way to the collages. They say "the natural world is beautiful and we should reconnect to it" and the 3rd design says "look at the action that has been taken". I am not sure that this is a typical way to communicate my article but I have been reassured that if it were a real commission and editor would still be interested in a collage portraying natures beauty to draw the reader in as an alternative to communicating an intellectual image. 

Now I need to refine my 3 chosen designs, make them simpler, use them in the right proportions and begin testing my processes.

To start this I began to create different paper: (I haven't got a lot of blue to show because I cut it up for the background)

Here I was experimenting with the layout and positioning of what to remove, what to leave, what more to add, how to simplify. Something I did change was that I liked the introduction of light to add some lightness to the heavy background (and it looks like light reflecting on a rock pool) however it was a bit too bright white so I added some yellowy splurges on just to break it up a bit...

3rd Image
Here I was responding to the quote "The Borders Trust has bought 3000 Hectares of bar mountainside and planted thousands of native trees". I thought that a good response to this would be to divide the mountain into a before and after.
I experimented with 2 different mountainsides. One has half brown and half white mountain (with lumps for rocks) and the other is just a bare mountain side with a line down it. I managed to get a really rugged edge by accident actually. The lino was quite old and crumbly so it ripped off into a mountain like edge which was unintentional but I really like!

Here I had some lino that was in the shape of a round stamp. I thought this was perfect size however here I was a numpty and carved out the image so therefore as it printed inverse had a lot of green in circles round it...

Learning from this mistake I cut the lino out the other way around however I left a ring around it which still printed. Also I printed it on the brown side of the mountain and it got lost in the brown...

Then I cut even more out and was happy with the result of my trees print. I feel that they are a good representation of a SYMBOL of a tree but I still didn't think this was a finished result...

I printed it on the other lino mountain design but the rocks printed stronger than the trees and therefore the perspective didn't work...

Then I had the light bulb moment idea to print onto some slightly coloured paper. I rushed back into uni and pulled out some grey/brown (as shown) and some brown. Here even though the trees and the background didn't print thoroughly I feel that it gives it a rustic feel as there is texture to it. Here again I am back to everything being handcrafted which I wanted to try not to be so apparent...