The aim of this exercise was to take 2 finished illustrations, then distil the essence of their language on paper at a size double the original - but in the same aspect ratio!
I decided to raid my bookshelf for illustrations this time. I did this for two reasons - the books I keep have emotional resonance, and I will be doing a book cover for my next exercise, so it will put me in the right frame of mind.
Actually there was a more practical third reason - I only had A3 as my largest paper, so I needed to pick an illustration that was printed in A5!
I ended up choosing the first copy I read of The Hobbit at primary school in 1989, and a book from The Horus Heresy science fiction series - detailing a pan-galactic civil war in the 41st millenium. I have been interested in this futuristic world since I was nine, so there was parity with my choices.
So, with the books in hand, I started do try the distillation at scale. I did one book after the other (so both steps before switching books). I started with The Hobbit:
I enjoyed playing with being able to be so loose, and to think about the key elements of the image. I struggled a bit with trees, and how much of that information needed to be in the image. In focusing so much on the details of the cliffs in the valley, I also made a mistake by not noticing the detail in the foreground, especially the path which ties to the road in the mid ground.
So, the next part of the challenge was to see how much information could I remove and still keep the essence of the illustration, its information and its language.
I am really happy with this attempt. It is very clear what the foci are in the image, and the lines train your gaze to the correct parts of the composition. I would have liked to have been able to render the criss-cross nature of the valley more successfully using only a few lines. However, I expect if I iterated on just that part I could probably do that.
This would actually make a useful sketchbook game - focussing on some element in an image or from life, and iterating it over and over quickly to see how I can distil the essence into as few lines as possible. A bit like gesture drawing I suppose.
On to the next image:
This is a much busier image, with a lot more detail. The title also occludes some of the composition, so I had to interpret the composition from the other elements. I found the character in the foreground hard to render in a few lines. But rather than worry I resolved to just do it, as I knew I had an opportunity to iterate on it. I am not sure how successful the magical character in the background is, but I am very happy with the representational swirls of magic energy.
Surprisingly, it was easier to simplify this visual than the earlier one. When I gave myself permission to really really simplify the foreground, it became much easier to break it into shapes, and overlap the lines if I needed to. This then made it easier for the background to be a very simple representation of a crowd.
The background character was still hard to distil - I was really not sure how much detail was needed, but I erred on the side of less. Matched with the simplified pyramid and pylons, the whole effect seems to convey the intention of the composition well.
I was able to find a version of the illustration as a poster, free from text needed in a book cover:
Looking at the image in this context was really interesting, I made some notes:
It was interesting how the artist has crafted this illustration specifically to be for a cover. There are two fairly obvious halves, and they are structured in a way that leaves space for title and blurb respectively. The interesting elements are pushed to the bottom so the reader can see them.
Given this is well thought-out, the art direction on the front part perplexed me. I had had problems rendering the language, because of the title obscuring the mid ground character. When you break down that page, the focal point is the staff of the foreground character, the larger character is left diminished, especially given his desaturated nature and the fact that he is obviously so powerful.
Given the nature of the book's content, it is odd that he is less of a focus. If it is intentional to make the soldiers the 'stars' of the piece, I find his placement confusing. Being not quite dominant or recessive makes the image conflicted, especially given where the text will lie (every book in the series has a common cover layout). I find the magic a necessary bit of detail for the book's story yet it is masked.
This has given me a really interesting insight into art direction, and it has been something I am noticing more and more in the illustration and design I see around me.
Images © George Allen & Unwin, and Games Workshop respectively, used and reproduced under fair-use for educational purposes.
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