Altered books Part 4: Ex 3 Sequencing images

For this exercise I had to create images onto which i used on the papers you collected in the first exercise. The images were a 16 page sequence made into a narrative for the poem 'Tango with cows'. I thought instead of using previous images I wanted to create brand new images.

 

Idea generation

Key words to give me ideas of the content for the narrative.

squeal of a sparrow.

Like a dog

ice floe down the river in spring

tinned mirth

conquerors of the air

kings of orange groves and cattle.

health of comets

diamond blood

record player

Well, to hell with you! hornless and ironed!

tango with cows 

build bridges

bovine jealousy 

to the tears of crimson girls.

Using the most prominent imagery as a foundation I then began some sketches in my sketchbook

Instead of using a folding method for every paper piece I just did any shape I felt fit before using a piece of paper as a backdrop for the collected pieces could remain the focus. I did however use an a3 piece of paper has a book cover with a spine held togethr with a piece of card.

 

 Research and development 

Deciding the images in relation to the words was rather easy. Once I did a rough 16 images using chronological order. I started with the clearest ideas such as the first lines 'squeal of a sparrow' 'like a dog' the obvious imagery I chose to focus on and turn them into images and depending on the material they were printed on played would with the medium and style.

I was torn between keeping the styles purely realistic or using a mixture to match the oddness of the various materials and mediums I would be using anyway. The way I inteperated the poem was the author of the poem desperately wants to watch cows do the tango so he can also join in. It's like wanting to do something that seems impossible by intoducing steps and observing these cows. First reflecting on their natural behaviours before providing them with music, joy and wine. How the diamond is compared to the rareness of a cow dancing. I can also see the innocence of a cow paired with the very unlikely chance of them standing on two legs and tango-ing.

 

Too break it down page by page ...

1. First few lines 'Squeal of a sparrow' 'like a dog'  I combined to make one hybrid animal consisting of a sparrow, dog and also a cow mentioned in the title.

2. 'Ice floe down the river' This page is a regular untreatred paper with blue card fof the river and I had the idea to make the ice pieces cow patches hence why their black but still capturing the shine of the ice with the silver gloss paper.

3. is a continuation of 'Ice floe down the river in SPRING' This is an obvious illustration for spring using the actual word and spring colours with a daffodil which I associate with the season. Using acrylic paint and a fine liner to make the edges stand out from the background.

4. 'Tinned mirth' I could imagine some overly expressive happy faces exploding out of a silver tin can so I coloured the faces with tones suggested throughout the text 'crimson' 'spring' 'river' I used grey paper some pastel for a splash of colour, a marker and some pecnil an fineliner for the the faces. I wish I didn't write the actual words an instead left it open to interpratation.

5. I found it hard to think of a way to visualise this 'conquerors of air' I thought of clouds and cartoon wind swirls and I had this piece of chocolate box cover with gold swirl patterns on which i thought represented air in a subtle way. Also adding some odd cow patches to fit the theme.

6. This is my least favourite page cause it's not as intresting to look at. I used beige paper with pastel and a bit of charcoal to draw 'king of orange grooves' so of course I had to put a crown on an orange but it looked boring so I added some marks and scribbles which didnt do much creatively. I felt it still does fit with the patternless sequence of styles in each page.'

7. "Cattle' simply illustrated as some quick sketched charcoal cows standing in a field looking at you. One wearing a crown following on from the last line. Because this is a long piece of card it is folded to fit into the 'book' in doing so ther is a ghost line printed all over the page which I love the look of makes for a busier scene.

8.This 'perhaps we'll drink wine and drink to the health of the comet' this is my favourite page becasue choosing a book page I immediately refered back to artist Tom Phillips who reworks entire books giving them new page design an finding sentences in the text to leave as afocus whilst blocking out all the rest until its context ahs change and is accompanied by a design which is what ive tried to do. Treating it like a picture of space, a floating wine glass, shiny stars and COMET as well and an actual comet shooting down the page.

 

 9./10.This page I chose to keep as a diamond using silver paper for the line 'expiring diamond blood' and using a sharpie another piece of card in red to be in splotchers for the blood. But with the back of it not being silver it just looked emtpy so I attatched the next part of the poem onto the back in the same shape 'Or better still- we'll get a record player!'. Then using a hole punch made a whole at the top of a piece of paper and threaded string allowing the diamond to spin to the next line when ever instead of creating a whole other page. As for the record player illustration I drew two curious cows invetigestigating a record player using black card for the vinyl. This is part of the poem were I can imagine the introduction to music comes in for the cows.

11. This next page is a digital cartoon of a empty faced looking cow chewing grass perhaps to show the though process surrounding doing the tango. "hornless and ironed" sound like theres no hope to what the author is trying to achieve. Theres a frustration towards the capability of a cow.

13. This next one is also digitally drawn to illustrate 'I want one- to dance one' my first thought was imagining a cow in a gradd made dress doing the tango after its listened to the music, theres not much elegance to see looking at a large nobbled knee'd cow. Its quite a funny idea so i had to bring it to life through a strange cartoon.

14. 'Tango with cows'  using a oldish looking book page, conviently I found a page with a relatable title of the chapter 'Galloping foxely' and paired it with some marker silhouettes of cows dancing with muscial notes to show that they're dancing to music.

 15. 'building bridges' This is another obvious illsutration of a pencil drawn bridge. I didnt have any creative designs in mind for this other then maybe just making it slightly realistic. I stuck this on a piece of packaging paper with the next page of the narrative simply to save space and follow the 'messy' style of the book.

16. This page is literal 'from the tears' ,cows that are actual tears. I did these on a piece of tracing paper to act like ' water' with it transparent nature. The use of glue also make the page look wet.

16. 'bovine jealousy' I used the colour that is symbolic of jealous, envy in literature. So picking a colour I squeezed soem blobs of paint on a sketchbook page and brushed the paint around the page with the odd details resembling a cow head, the thickenss of some parts makes this apparent. Reminds me of a finger painting with its abstract theme.

Now the last page was accidental as I miscounted how many images i'd done so technically this is 17. and reflects the 'tears of crimson girls' I used the colour crimson red and just messily painted over the page keeping certain drops a bit darker.

As for the folding of paper in this exercise I left that detail out unintentianally as I thought the scale and type of paper coudl be anything so it made it a bit confusing folding wise, it would have meant id need a certain amount of paper to even fold when some fo the pieces i collected were big enough to do. it was a bit restricitve considering how uncordianted all the illustrations are as well as the scale and qualities of the papers.

can we approach text as image? What happens if you ‘rasterize’ text, then begin to manipulate it, in the same way as you would montage image material. Be creative! Explore!

 "This is your opportunity to explore some of the features of digital imaging software, such as Photoshop, to layer images, cut out images,
experiment with opacity, filters, hue, brightness, contrast and halftone screens,
among other things."

I think what I have done in this exercise is experimented with different style and paper trypes/materials to illustrate 'Tango with cows' in an expressive, literal and colourful way. I have not stuck to one particular look or shape which kind of fits my intepretation of the poem. The weird concept of seeing a cow dance and how many different emotions, steps and influences it would take. My approach to the sequence also follows this.

After I had already made up my mind on the illustrations I only played around with a few pages I felt  had potetional to be expereimented with, and text digitally after they were finished.. All of these images I edited on Procreate.

 I brought my hybrid animal to life using real photos and merging them together to create this creature. This is far more perculiar in real life than my sketch is.

 

For this one I pasted in a running river in the place of the solid blue card, adding shadows under the ice chunks and using some trees to look as if they'd grown through the page.

For another page I removed the words on the can and replaced it by cloning odd pieces until the words were gone and warped the faces a little, I had high hopes in warping the faces but it didnt come out aswell as I hoped, there wasnt enough space to pull the heads out further or manipulate the features without it looking awful.

I did however found a real tin picture an had the heads coming out of that instead which gives a cool mixture of real and cartoon drawing.

 

 

 I just cut an pasted all the cow shadows in this piece and added them all around the page, i then used a filter that makes it look like its taken with a lense. I can see this as being as looking at germs through a microschop and watching them move and dance, the bigger words emphasise this idea as well as the different sized cows.

 

This next page 'tango with cows' I got a bit to carried away with. I thought firstly creating a real version of my original cartoon which I did, but I kept adding on, I added a background full of cows, a record player on the grass, cartoon eyes on all the cows to look suprised and then finally adding a dress to the dancing cow only to make the whole image into a gif.

 I had fun creating this one because of how random the process was and how it spiralled,

Text wise I chose a few word and phrases from the poem to make into images. I drew some in freehand and others used set typeface. I really like how they turned out I paid attention to the shape of the words visually such as a glass of wine taking the actual shape of the glass and playing around with the size of the text to communicate the image eg. Life shorter than the squeal of a sparrow having word gradually changing size as the bird tweets. For Bovine jealousy all the letters of the words are postioned in a head shape using different fonts an a hint of yellow like the painting in the sequence above.