In case you didn't see my first post, my thesis topic is heavily philosophical. It's based on an experience I had, where I created a happy place for personal use and later added things that made it more "realistic" - more like Earth. It got a lot darker than I would have originally intended, after I put crime, discrimination, death, war, and other ideas in the world. When I looked at the world as a whole, I saw the evil I created, and I felt I had rendered this "happy place" no longer happy. But then it came to my attention that, before I added the evil, the world felt out of balance, like there was too much goodness for this to be an actual place. The shadows, I realized, balanced it out. However, after a few months of developing the evil side, devoting my thought process to every little problematic detail, I couldn't take it anymore. It was too negative, too foul, and it was driving me insane. I couldn't just focus on the bad things, but I couldn't just focus on the good things, either. A world without one or the other is only halfway real. In the end, the statement I wanted to make with this artwork was that although it's in our nature as human beings to see the extremes - here, the good and evil side of a make-believe world - it's not necessarily healthy to only see one extreme or the other.
You can see here that I'm using a 3D glasses technique, but in reverse, ish. Instead of trying to see both at the same time, I'm using the glasses to have the viewer focus on each color individually. The above photos are just gradient maps, where I tested out the effect and tried to separate the colors.
I'm using 3D glasses because it effectively illustrates my idea. The world has good parts and bad parts, like 3D glasses have a green lens and a pink lens (at least mine do), and even though it might not make sense when you see it through both sides, it's just not complete when you shut one side out. It's unrealistic to ignore the good side of the world, and it's unrealistic to do the same to the bad side. And yet, people always seem to like making a special effort to only see one side or the other.
These sketches are more tests: I wanted to make sure that there would be enough contrast in each color to differentiate the contents, despite the fine lines. (Sorry about the photo quality in that last one, btw. It was the most decent picture I had, taken on a phone camera through a pink 3D glasses lens in a poorly-lit classroom.)
The final artwork isn't going to be words; those are just placeholders for images depicting the concepts. For example, where it says “war” there would be a drawing of a soldier in battle. Either that, or it IS going to be words, but they'll be prettier than my chicken scratch handwriting. Maybe a combination. I guess we'll see!
The piece itself is going to be about human-sized, so maybe around 5'5" to 6'? Somewhere around there?? I'm making it that big for a few reasons:
- So lots of people can see it and read it from a distance. If you're going to stuff yourself full of opinions and go around spouting off about your worldview, I've got to make sure you get a good, long, clear look at what you're choosing... And what you're choosing to ignore.
- I've also got to make it as big as a human, because people are made of opinions, and if you try to fill a regular house with dollhouse furniture, you're not going to get very far.
- Honestly there's not really a lot of technical detail in this. There's two colors, one really simplistic composition (well, actually two, but it's the same composition just reversed and layered over), and it's probably going to be colored pencil or marker. Like I said, not much detail, so I can afford to make it as big as me.
Oh! Speaking of colored pencil. These are the colors I'll be using:
They're prismacolors, so r.i.p. my wallet, but like I said, I'm not sure if it'll be colored pencils or markers. Does anyone out there know where I can get a bunch of ^^these-color prismas for cheap? Please let me know if you do. I'm broke as you know what, so any "I know a guy" comments would be appreciated.
Also, I need a bit of advice for the illustrations. Should I use images, or should I keep it as words? I feel like the words get it across more clearly, but images would be more artistic. Thoughts?
If I choose to keep the words, what should I do with them? I'd like them to be as clear and legible as possible, but if I'm going to just write words, I need to make it fancy or something. What sort of fonts should I use? Script, sans serif, decorative, serif...?
If I choose to do images, how should I imply the composition? Should I have the colors get lighter towards the center, or should I have the drawings all facing towards the center?
Any comments, opinions, thoughts would be amazing!
