Week Four - to investigate the visual communication of abstract – feelings and thoughts

Memories of Childhood

Girl with dogs - Kitty Skye

1. Poem. half remembered Childhood .

Some of these things are true

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Week Two - "The Arrival" and its use of metaphor

Metaphor

“… I often like to think of words and images as opposite points on a battery, creating a potential voltage through a ‘gap’ between telling and showing. It requires the reader’s imagination to complete the circuit …”(1)

Metaphor definition and news clipping for narrative inspiration

The Arrival

"The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope."(2)

Analysis

•  A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town
• The old country is portrayed with a sense of doom and gloom, the image is dark with an unknown, faceless, creeping monster with tendrils seeping around the streets and houses. There appears to be no end to the row upon row of streets of austere tiny windowed homes. It is unsympathetic, hard and grim.
•  an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean
• Tan uses scale expertly in his works, and has done so again in this narrative. In order to demonstrate the almost immeasurable expanse of the sea the man has to traverse, a colossal cloud hovers darkly above the expansive ocean and the ship appears tiny, and we know from our own experience of grand sea travel, that this vessel is in fact itself titanic in size, accentuating even more so the huge distance the protagonist is journeying away from his family.
• He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages
• They say that you can usually tell a tourist because they tend to look up and around and point at things which we take for granted. The first  sequence of images we see is a close-up of the man looking up and around, he looks up, his hand shielding his eyes from the light to see a flock of seabirds, not the usual seagulls one would expect. The view changes to a long shot where characters are also looking up and pointing up at the birds. Then an extreme long shot shows us the harbour, city skyline, again with the crowd on the ship gesturing towards this unfamiliar metropolitan land of hope. Tan has devised characters to form "any" foreign language. 
• With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment
• The protagonist communicates with a notebook and pencil and draws a bed and window to indicate that he seeks somewhere to stay, he continues to use this form of communication.
• He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope

Conclusion

Tan uses weird and wonderful surrealist creatures, symbols, landscapes and cityscapes to communicate with the viewer. He also uses sequences of images in the comic art style.

The Arrival - Confused Man - Shaun Tan 2007

Evaluation

I thought it would be interesting to represent the tidal wave as giant hands embracing the children to show that they are safe even though they have been torn away from their family with such a great natural force. They are then transported to a foreign land where the sun is shining and there is hope. 

References

(1) Tan, Shaun http://www.alma.se/en/award-winners/2011-Recipient/More-about-XXX/
(2) Tan, Shaun http://www.shauntan.net/books/the-arrival.html

Week One - Caricature

Nigel Farage Clay Model Caricature

I have confirmed what I suspected - that caricature is not for me!

That said, I suppose I ought to explain why...?

Whilst I can appreciate the skill and background knowledge of the illustrators who depict the persons in caricatures, I find the images bawdy, garish and singularly unattractive. No offence to the talented artists who produce this often comical and intellectual art form. 

Sketches made from head sculpture

Conclusion

I can definitely appreciate the usefulness of have a 3D model to draw from. I do use myself, friends, my daughter and her toys quite regularly for this very purpose. But having a specifically designed model is even better! They keep still for a start and there are more options for drawing from many angles.