Studio Brief 2- Printed Pictures

Printed Pictures

Structure              

I refined my interpretation of Atwoods texts (The Handmaids Tale, Alias Grace and Cats Eye), to key themes of women; being trapped by religion, defined by their uterus, always being watched, being unhappy and suppressed, having no rights. These guided my zine, providing it with structure and focus. Each full-page spread contains a full-bleed image alongside a simple mouthless face as a conversation with each-other to inspire the reader to reflect.

Colour

Two main colours are used in the Handmaids Tale. Red, the colour of: blood, love, seduction, violence, anger, intensity, pain (portraying the fruitful but enslaved handmaids) and blue (portraying the ladies of the house who cannot bear child). From these I chose to create purple, associated with ambition, wealth, wisdom and creativity, to represent that women were aware of what was happening, and were planning ways of escaping and rebelling.

Process

I found it difficult to start, in particular to identify ideas different from the editorials. However, this process allowed me to distil ideas from initial sketches into more abstract responses.

Although I like the results of screen printing, I didn’t like working with this method. I found the print-room intimidating, so much could go wrong for example; not preparing positives correctly, struggling to align the prints (although this worked in my favour for the Uterus print), not printing with an even layer of ink.

In contrast, I really like the process of mono-printing. I find the textures created satisfying and there is a feeling of experimenting and creating unexpected results. Some of these I can now edit digitally.

Experimentally, I like the roller prints from the lino (more than the actual lino-cut prints), finding them more interesting and having more depth. However, they were more challenging to work with and I struggled to use Photoshop to manipulate them so the line-work could be visible enough. I left some out of the final zine although they were really effective as analogues.

I struggled to collage so many different files on the computer. Realizing how much I prefer having things physically and visually laid out.

Conclusion

I realised from this module how important simplicity is and yet this doesn’t which come naturally to me. I found it useful to focus on specific quotes to refine specific visual messages. I also learnt that not everything has to look life-like as long as it contains the important elements.
I feel that I have taken a very calm approach to this module and steadily completed everything so I wasn't stressed near hand-in.