OUIL504 Illustration 1 Part 1 - Combining the Intangible and the tangible

After working on creating intangible themes visually - we were then tasked to create a series of 12 images, either A5 or bigger that combined the Line, Collage and the Intangible themes we had been dealing with. At this point I was running out of steam with the existing motifs I had, and I decided to think about how I could combine these with other themes related to my authors work - things like overconsumption, for example. 

The good thing about doing this was it also tied in the intangible elements I had been working with nicely. So I went away and found a load of other motifs usually associated with consumerism - things like fancy designer products, shopping bags, shiny jewellery, shoes and combined those with the animal motifs that i'd been working on.

 

(there were 12 of these originally, the 12th being a green Iguana wearing an ipod, but it got lost due to poor organisation before I photographed it)

I really enjoyed the process of making these - even though they were time consuming and not particularly a suitable media to work in given the tight deadline we had. I think collage is a process that suits me well because it forces me to think simplistically whilst still working in a labour intensive manner. Removing the chance to work digitally on them as well was a challenge, since I had to work hard on refining them as much as possible without a graphics tablet in my hands.

We had a progress crit as a group of all of the work we had done up to this point. My work was well recieved - a lot of people liked the simple nature of the motifs and felt they had a clear message behind them. Some of them worked better than others; my personal favourites being the heel squishing the fish and the boots covered in blood - things like the gorilla holding the handbag and the fox in the nike trainers perhaps didn't communicate what I was going for quite as well, or the rainbow sludge coming out of the electronic devices. But on the whole, they were a pretty nice turnout, and a reminder to me to continue pushing myself out of my comfort zone.