For this exercise, I needed to explore colour palettes. Specifically the challenge of using a limited palette. As I was writing out Research task 1.1 I noticed the phrase 'limited palette' coming up. I wondered if this was something I was drawn to, or simply a current design trend. I really like images with a retro feel, especially if they have an authentic printed feel. One of the images in my research typified this approach:
The illustrator allows for the paper itself to be interpreted as a colour, and this allows them to accomplish a lot with four colours. However, for this exercise, I needed to create illustrations with only three (and then two!) colours. The topic was to choose five household objects starting with the same letter.
Research
I decided to start this exercise by researching effective palettes as well as other examples of very limited palette illustrations. The first thing that came to mind was an exercise in Key Steps in Illustration where we reduced everything down to black and white:
I really liked this image by Sònia Albert which uses the printing technique of utilising transparency to achieve a third colour:
I also like the textural quality of the clothing, it looks like she did as much drawing with the eraser as she did with a brush. Thinking again back to my research tasks, the other thing I noted was how many of the illustrators that I liked seemed to be influenced by mid-20th-century illustrations, so this seemed to be a good seam to mine a little more. I discovered some really interesting work which I thought could be useful for this exercise.
The work of Toby Frampton above uses the same overlay technique and white space. I like its retro influences whilst still having a contemporary quirky character of its own.
Ralph Costeno's illustrations reminded me of the cookie box illustrations I did in Key Steps in Illustration. I like the cartoony feel and the way halftones are used effectively to give tonal options with a two-colour approach. My cookie boxes led my train of thought to how an etched approach could also be an effective way to use only two colours. The illustration by Caroline Church has that 19th-century look using only black and white:
Planning
I started by using my sketchbook to write down household objects. I picked the letter "C" for no particular reason. I knew that I didn't want to do something abstract, and wanted to try and create a composition that had a narrative element to it. As I started to write things down the word associations led me to think about the recent coronation of King Charles. I then asked myself "Does it have to be my household?!" An image of Charles celebrating his own coronation then popped into my head. I used my sketchbook to thumbnail some potential ideas before I settled on the strongest idea that I could experiment with more as part of the sketching process.
Roughs
I next sketched digitally. Having researched different mid-century approaches to minimal palettes [1] I wondered if this idea might work as a poster.
So I spent some time sketching first in a portrait aspect, trying to adopt a geometric approach to the forms to emulate aspects of the period. However, I found this orientation challenging when it came to the composition and sense of movement.
So in the end I decided to abort this direction and moved back to a landscape aspect, which seemed to work better when visualising all of the items.
My first approach was close to the thumbnail I had drawn in my sketchbook. I altered some of the angles in the composition to reflect the horizontal movement. The corgi at this stage was not congruent with the overall style of the sketch. This was because I took the time to look at reference images to get an accurate representation of a corgi running. I know I would have to re-draw this to fit it with the other elements, but I was grateful for Exercise 1.1 which gave me confidence this would be the right approach.
When I stood back and looked at the image, I felt that the composition still wasn't working as well as I would have liked. So I iterated on the first sketch to produce a new composition which I thought was more successful. Looking at my research, a lot of images played a little loosely with perspective, so this composition worked better assuming the ground was represented.
To get an idea of how I might overlay two colours and where I needed a blend I used pencil colours to overlay the sketch and experimented with different weights of pressure to represent opacity.
The sketch in itself was pretty successful like this, but I wanted to try and emulate some vintage printing effects. So I started by blocking in the main shapes that would hold colour, and then adding in selected lines which I could also overlay if I needed a darker colour to feel like black.
Three Colour Palette
As I was using full opacity colours at this stage the corgi was unsurprisingly lost in the red carpet, but I was not worried - now was the fun part! The first effect I wanted to emulate was a risograph print. Given that the king was wearing a purple tunic at his coronation I had chosen red and blue as logical colours combine. I researched common Risograph inks that are available and then created a palette in my software for ease of reference. I took time to add different opacities of each coloured ink alongside authentic risograph textures at each of those opacity points to get the right overlay combinations. I placed a risograph paper texture over the image. to give it an overall authentic feel.
I also added in some shadows under the characters to give a better sense of height and movement.
I really like the end result. I learned a lot about the mid-20th-century style but still managed to adapt it to my own style and preferences.
Two Colour Palette
When moving to a very limited palette there are different ways of achieving contrast and separation. I decided that I would try and take a vintage newsprint approach, where halftones and patterns were used to create value with only one ink on cheap printing paper. Adapting the image was simple, but not easy. As I had created shapes for the main elements, I converted them into halftones. This took a while to get the right sizes so that the overall image told the same visual story, and there was enough contrast to separate the elements. I used a dark red ink colour similar to the limited palette available in 1960s lithographic printing.
In the end, the halftones couldn't do the same kind of heavy lifting as layering colours. So I ended up going back into the image to add more definition through line work and then layered different halftone patterns to add some basic shading. This was relatively successful, but the colour didn't seem to have the same impact I wanted. So I experimented by recolouring the image with some different options:
The readability changed with both the hue and the value of the colour. Light colours like yellow and green didn't seem to work at all, probably because there wasn't enough contrast with the background paper stock. So I finished off by colouring the image in a darker "Royal Purple" which I thought was very apt!
This seems to read so much better, and the halftones are a lot more impactful. I also like that his tunic is purple again! After I had finished I compared my approach to the problem with other students who have completed this module. There were a lot of variations in both style and approach. I couldn't say that any were 'right' or 'wrong' and all of the students solved the problem well in their own way. What I found most interesting was the way we all made choices based on our preferences, and I can see that my approach reflects some of the illustrations I selected for my earlier Research points.
References
Inglis, T. (2019) Mid-century modern graphic design. 6th edn. London: Batsford Books.
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