Part 2: Visual Metaphor

Exercise details

From the choice of different phrases available for this metaphor exercise I chose, "Broken Relationship." I chose this because I thought it seemed quite a difficult one to do, and I wanted to challenge myself.

Looking at Visual Metaphor Artwork

There are a huge number of examples of Visual Metaphor which can be found online.  I've collected quite a few that caught my interest and pulled them together below (with general thoughts added as annotation under each):

Also the composition of this image interests me, why such a tight crop?

Is the visual metaphor very clear though? What exactly is this image trying to say?

As above, interesting visual, but the exact meaning is a little elusive. 

I like the clever use of photo manipulation. I also think the glow is extremely effective in making the impact of the final image.

Straight to the point!  (But what if you are from a culture that has never heard of the term "couch potato"?). Visual metaphors are always embedded into cultural references/contexts.



This is clearly a visual metaphor for economic choices, but I'm thinking is this visual a little too obvious and a little bit cliched?

Striking.  Although the text has to be read for context to the image.


I think humour (or irony) in visual metaphors can be very effective.  Could it be argued that in the visual arts, humour has a natural home in visual metaphors?  Humour and visual metaphors seem to happily co-exist.

It takes a moment to work it out and to understand the meaning. I suppose some visual metaphors can be understood instantly, and some take a little (or more) time to take in and understand. 

Power to the people!  Digitally.  A pondering thought... is it a picture of defiance, rebellion or frustration?

"Run away" brain.





I know quite a few people like this!  Haha!

Met on Facebook?  Obsessing with each other on Facebook?

Visual metaphors can certainly combine very different areas: Retro pop culture meets social controversy!

Overall, I particularly like the Banksy ones. I think his visual metaphors are very clever.  They seem to have a meaning that we can clearly understand and relate to, yet paradoxically, there is great ambiguity and room for interpretation, making for a less than clear-cut interpretation. His images always seem to combine a sense of fun with a teasing "challenge" to the viewer with his political and social issues.

I've also found that some of the visual metaphors used in advertising can also be extremely powerful. Especially where a well chosen piece of information adds necessary meaning and impact to the metaphor. For example, in the Save the Children advertisement below.



Brainstorming and Ideas development

I thought I'd start the brainstorming/ideas development by creating some hand-drawn lettering (inspired by something I saw in the Hand Job book).

Then I just progressed in my brainstorming in a fairly experimental fashion: Writing down words, drawing little sketches, doodling... I suppose you could describe it as some form of free-thinking visual process. It approach was quite enjoyable and allowed me to free-associate; letting images and things drift through my mind as I worked.

Here is my sketchbook page:

Development of ideas

The brainstorming process was directly leading me towards a drawing of two people in profile staring at each other with angry/disappointed faces, a broken heart between them.

I was thinking back to one of the drawings on the Drawing and Painting exercise, and mulling over the possibilities of drawing this on crumpled newspaper. My thought was that crumpled paper could be a good look - visually enhancing and alluding to the "broken" theme.   So I crumpled a piece of drawing paper, and drew in the main figures.  I wanted the faces to be abstracted and subjective, and not accurately rendered faces.   I didn't think the illustration would work with accurate drawings of faces.

My drawing on the crumpled paper:


...after this I felt it would be best to proceed mainly in digital. Experiment with traditional media combined with digital drawing tools.

Final artwork

(Click for full size image)

Further explanations/reflections

  • The original sketch of the love heart I felt was pretty good. I liked the style of it, so I scanned it, and manipulated the colours to enhance the red.  This seemed to bring out the pencil strokes and marks; making it looked like the (metaphorical) damaged heart of a broken relationship. It was important that each piece seemed to visually be owned by each person, and therefore representing what they had between them is broken.

  • The paper needed to be colder in order to visually represent the cooling and distance between people in a broken relationship.  I manipulated the paper to a blue tint.
  • I also enhanced the contrast of the shadows/crumpling of the paper to create more visual "tension" in the image.  Softening with blur also helped it blend better with the other visual elements.
Overall, I'm not quite sure what I feel about this image!  I'd say I've been successful with the visual metaphor, but the style of the drawing is completely different and new to me.  And when I relax about it, I can say it is an image I like to look at. But I've never drawn faces like this and I'm very uncertain about such "cartoon-like" abstracted faces. 

Overall, it has been a very different experience which I've enjoyed on the whole.  This part 2 keeps pushing boundaries for me.

Postscript

Please read the first entry for part 3, I've now reworked and made an alternative.  The new illustration is below:



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Part 2: Spider Diagrams

Image
In this exercise I had to explore four words; creating a mind-map for each. The four words are Seaside, Childhood, Angry and Festival. - - -  The first word I explored was Seaside. I found this a pleasurable and fun activity and the associations kept flying into my mind.  I couldn't resist adding a few little drawings and images to bring the mind-map to life a little more: Next - Childhood. A more difficult brainstorm compared to seaside; the word associations were more difficult to bring to mind. Perhaps the main difference between seaside and childhood is the nature of the words.  With seaside visualisation, there are lots of "stuff" and "things". Plenty of nouns.  However, with childhood, there are more complex visual associations and words produced.  More adjectives for sure.  And perhaps this is why the childhood spider diagram has a different feel to me compared to the seaside one. However, overall I'm fairly pleased with the outcome
Read more

Part 3: Abstract Illustration

Image
I liked this exercise! It was fun listening to a piece of music to create an abstract drawing.  The music I chose to listen to was a George Gershwin compilation. The image I made (whilst listening to this music) is below: To produce this drawing I used watercolour sticks and pulled the ink out into a wash using a brush.  I then applied coloured ink washes to deepen and enhance the colours in different areas.  I chose watercolour and coloured ink because I felt that this would (somehow) suit the 1930s style/mood of the music. What adjective or word describes the the tone of the piece?   This is a fascinating question because it is entirely subjective, and will probably be skewed on the state of mind of the viewer at the given point of reflection.  Perhaps the interpretation and feelings invoked from abstract art are always transient depending on the current mood/state of mind of the viewer?  For instance, a short while ago I looked at the image and thought "confus
Read more

Part 3: Client Visuals

Image
Exercise details In this exercise I will be taking two finished illustrations and creating the line visual for each one. Visual for Illustration 1  I've chosen a children's book called,  Recipe for Bedtime,  illustrated by Sarah Massini.  I chose the artwork on the cover of the book because I felt it was charming and had a sufficient range of content for me to work with. Initial line visual: I found this exercise to be rather curious. It felt like a no creativity exercise; merely basic observation and drawing skills.  The line drawing was quite straightforward to produce, and reducing down the visual detail into a simple drawing was fairly straightforward.   I think I've been very tight and controlled in this drawing, there is no looseness and expressiveness to the line.  I was constantly mindful of having to create an accurate and sharp line drawing of the original image. I feel that the drawing is fairly successful it is faithfulness to the original imag
Read more