a r t w o r k : s i l h o u e t t e s t o r y t e l l i n g
Title: Loosen Up
Size: 20.32 x 20.32cm Medium: Ink & Watercolor Paint on Hot Press Illustration Board Completion: July 2019 Exhibition Text:"Loosen Up" is an 8 by 8 inch illustration piece produced on hot press board with black ink markers and watercolor paint. This piece is my interpretation of a silhouette drawing that, by taking a horror approach like Japanese horror artist Junji Ito, tells the story of an overworked painter who finds herself at a stand still when her painting arm twists into a spiral. Her arm seems to be fighting against her need to work, as it disables her from the passion she's grown so heavily attached to.
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Introducing: Silhouette Storytelling - a project by Miad
The Silhouette Storytelling was a week long project that started with my Pre-Collage Illustration classmates, unknowing to what we’d be doing, drawing a total of 5 rectangles, 2 circles, and 1 triangle per square. For each, we were given really only 15 seconds to draw them, and when time was up we were introduced the main basis for it.
We had to spot out outback own inspiration—first making notes of what figures/objects/etc we saw in each square, and then we’d start concerting. We had to come up with an illustration that teased back to the original silhouetted shapes we draw on the sheet. We studied the importance in thumbnail sketches and critiqued a lot throughout to get to the final product that we wished at the end. The sheet to the left is the basis/basic info of the entire project produced by my Miad professors themselves. I decided to summarize above. |
Inspiration:
Artists In Focus: Junji Ito
My first approach to really any piece of art that I'm creating, especially with the conceptual freedom in this one, was to find a human within the shapes. I noticed a circle in the shapes I drew too (please, for aid towards what I'm referencing, scroll down to my planning to see these shapes), and immediately thought back to the horror in making everyday things scary. My interest in Junji Ito's work, a Japanese horror mangaka, was almost an immediate indicator towards what I'd be doing. His ability to use specific detail, in line and form of a black ink pen, and to do it with such an intensity in his work has always interested me. It gets the viewer up on their toes and staring. |
The two works above are from Junji Ito's "Uzumaki" (transalted in English to "Spiral") series. It's a popular horror manga all over, composed from 1998 to 1999, and the collection is a famous one in horror comic media all over. These pieces are from two different parts of the manga.
In "Uzumaki", the many citizens of city "Kurōzu-cho", all ages and genders are dealing with the oddest phenomenon, a curse even, that involves the spiral shape. The way Ito makes the inner character struggle beside the actual horror of spiralization is riveting-I even see it as a masterpiece in the horror comic genre.
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Planning:
I started off fairly simple in the sketching process:
- Took a look at the sheet of shapes we were instructed to draw & chose the one I got most inspired by. - With the idea, I shaped it out, as seen to the right, and pieced together which shape looked like what thing/person/feeling (etc). After this, I could finally see my idea on paper, so that's where I officially started sketching. The most important factor in my piece would be the mangled arm, as this is where I'd want the viewer's attention drawn to most. Line would be a gold mine to use on wrinkling and raveling the horror to what it should be. Using more dark lines would bring more intensity, while less would show a settling of things. I played around with hand and face positioning a lot because emotion would be key in this work. |
Journal/Planning Page 1
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Journal/Planning Page 2
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Journal/Planning Page 3
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Journal/Planning Page 4
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To the left show my very initial thumbnail sketches. They were all ideas that I could've ushered towards if the timing felt right, but number 9 just felt so clear to me. Drawing gore and horror, and being able to link back to how one of my favorites did the medium, was too good to pass up. Plus, the story idea of my character being an overworked artist hit to close to home. Both of us too afraid to stop working in fear of falling behind or failure. I always make my pieces personal in some way, shape, or form, so that also hit hard here in planning for what was to come.
Reaching Ito's expertise in the area are big shoes to fill, but if I'm given the chance to try at it, I certainly will in this work. |
Experimentation:
Real life examples are, especially for me, a key factor into reaching exactly what I want in my final outcome. The human figure and anatomy is always something I've tried to nail in my works, atleast to a practical sense where I can later alter and play around with it, so I took my first initial sketch idea, propped myself up in an alike pose that still his my silhouette drawing, and redrew what I saw.
Hand positioning and arm focus, again, should be the most prominently compelling element of my piece. The line work and attention to deatil in making the arm horrific and eye boggling was a main want for my final product.
That being said, the arm should visibly attached to the girl. That was problem I was having quite a bit in the beginning. A few of my classmates thought the spiraled arm was a whole other entity beside the girl, which brought up confusion, and ultimately made me pose myself up for reference. It was easier to make the arm more I focus, and, when my class would later critique eachothers work, their eyes would move with my arm sketches and the wanted reaction would be brought into main attention. |
Experimentation with Medium: Watercolor Paints & Marker on Cold Press & Hot Press
The choice of final product board would actually be more important than one would previously think. The texture of the illustration board can differ when a tool is used on it. For example, the cold press board had a smoother surface. It omitted me from doing light and harsh detail that didn't look too... marker like, kind of life I was drawing on a white board, so hot press felt a lot better in contrast. I ended up using these ink markers I never really used before, graciously provided by Miad, from the brand Faber-Castell. They're actually amazing liners for pieces like this, and the black lines looked well on the hot press board I chose. I also ended up using grey, black, and white Watercolor paints to really dig into our B&W color limitation while also linking back to Junji Ito's comic work. He can make things look either gross or straight up terrifying in only black and white, so using these mediums within my final product would be something I had to do with ease. |
Process:
Starting this project involved me breaking down the shapes and figures of my chosen silhouette drawing. Planning for a final product and drawing out tests that’ll show off plausible designs for then is something our instructors endlessly pushed on us. That being said, my first day was spent concepting and drawing out everything I wanted to show in my final illustration. I drew the female figure I had in mind and set up her arm and paint tools in the areas that would compliment the chosen silhouette I had. I also built backstory for my character to get more into it. explanation of step in more detail |
I decidedly ran with my initial sketch, and posed myself up in a position that would still mock the silhouette figure drawing while also getting certain proportions down correctly. With my new idea, I went home that day to redraw my female figure. It was important for me to work out anatomy so everything else made sense beside her mangled arm that I’d be messing around with. The photo shown has me propped up in the correct position and stance that’d I’d be drawing my female character in, and you can see the result of that on the right of it. |
Having the hand of the girl from the arm in large focus was important in many senses. Something I wanted to personally fix from my initial sketch was how the hand looked. I played already with what I could do with the human hand, and ended up going forward with the drawing shown. It made the arm look more restless, like it was still moving around and twisting. |
Our class went through critiques, this being both of our piece's backstory and look to the sketch, and a lot of people had trouble figuring out where the hand was coming from so I redrew one. This didn’t really make me change too much about my initial sketch, but this time I made sure the arm was more visibly attached to the female than not. People during critiques said their eyes moved with the arm a lot, but they still thought it was a different entity than my female, so I had to tweak that
My professors made a few copies for me to work with, and I brought them home to start getting an outline into my final product's illustration board. I fixed the style of the hand again really because of critiques and also because I felt like I could make it more disabled in its position. It was spiraling and twisting to the point of no return, and I also had the hand throw the paintbrush off more obviously to show this correlation. |
After getting the outline of the sketch on my illustration board, I started to formally line it with a Faber-Castell branded ink marker. I had measurements done on our given hot press illustration board, and from there I used Tracing Paper to get my newly printed sketch onto the board. The tracing paper has graphite in one side of the paper, so it allows you to draw on the clear side and get a soft pencil sketch on the board as you please. This process didn’t take me that long. |
I started to both experiment and begin my background with black, grey, and white hued Watercolor paints. Playing around with the hot press board and how it’s texture played with my marker, I moved carefully to not mess up. I used a thicker liner around areas like the arm and body while using thin liner against the female’s face, so I wouldn’t mess up. This would lay out everything I needed to both add detail and use watercolor. |
This part was very new to me as I’ve only ever used watercolors in kindergarten. I noticed how with the amount of water you’d add to the paint it’d indicate how light it’ll show up on the material. For example, more water made the paint have a loose look on paper; it was easier to see the white behind this way. I decided to refer back to Ito’s work by making there still be white around the more intense parts of the piece. I really wanted that arm to stand in horrific focus.
When the background was settled to the way I wanted, I moved back in with the Faber-Castell ink marker to create depth and detail through line in my figure. I did every strand of her hair as a single line, and, depending on where I want reflection to pop off of, I used less or more lines. For example, the upper hair area has more white showing than the bottom, but the fact that it still looks like a head of hair still is relevant. Working through the arm was where line and texture played enormous factors. I used darker and thicker lines by the edge of the arm lineart, and areas where the center of the arm show have a lot more less. This creates a harmony of lines to the point of the arm creating an illustration of twisting and mangling. I also finished up the details by making sure the style referenced back to Junji Ito’s a bit, while still having my look to things. |
The detail really finalized the piece, so I was given the okay to cut black mat board to mount my piece in. For a gallery showing, we decided to cut black mat board into a square shape with an open center, so we could have our piece sit in a window type fashion. I also included the measurements for this as well, so the sizes can make more sense to how big our pieces are and so forth. |
My final step was recreating the face from the small mistakes I made with marker beforehand. This was done before putting it up onto my Weebly. My satisfaction with the face wasn’t so bad, but, since it was bugging me, I tweaked the face the best I could digitally. I’ll be reprinting this newer version of the piece and putting it into the window, so my final piece can be shown formally at its best. |
Critique:
This next area will be comparing my piece to it's original inspiration: Junji Ito's horror manga series "Uzumaki".
Similarities May Include:
We both use Line as huge asset in creating intensity and a strong texture in our works. For example, the detail that the arm has makes it look even more intense, as the same in Junji Ito's pieces to the right near the female's eye and the spiraled man.
- We both use our piece's harmony as a whole to dig a focal point into the piece's horror factor. Ito's piece does this around the spiraled eyeball in the female's face and in the detail of the spiraled man's face and skin. I do this with my mangled arm; using a lot more detail on this arm creates an intensity in the look, it kind of yells to the viewer. - The feeling the viewer gets out of our works is alike. It's supposed to convey something horror/gore themed, making an audience feel the fear, perhaps the trauma, through the character in the work. It gives off emotions that aren't good; they're anything but. |
Differences May Include:
- Junji Ito's pieces are actually snippets from his manga series titled "Uzumaki" thus making it a bit of something bigger, while mine is a single illustration that isn't a part of a bigger series. I use thick and thin black lines to make it look more comic like, however, my piece is just a single item in general. It'd be amazing to make a comic out of this though...
- My piece surrounds the character in black while Junji Ito's piece(s) have more overall detail. Again, this may be because of Junji Ito's pieces being something of a much larger comic, but I used black in the background so the figure in front would have a heavier focus. It puts a lot more emphasis on the horror in my character, as her hand twists and spirals right in frot of her.
- My piece, altough I don't quite know if Ito did this with his comic, has a more personal touch to it. As I usually do in all of my work, I include a personal reflection. My piece, for example, has a female character who tends to overwork herself to the point of her body recoiling in exhaustion. Ito's is a comic, thus not really having all of it represent a deeper personal issue he had (at least not in a larger setting like mine).
- My piece surrounds the character in black while Junji Ito's piece(s) have more overall detail. Again, this may be because of Junji Ito's pieces being something of a much larger comic, but I used black in the background so the figure in front would have a heavier focus. It puts a lot more emphasis on the horror in my character, as her hand twists and spirals right in frot of her.
- My piece, altough I don't quite know if Ito did this with his comic, has a more personal touch to it. As I usually do in all of my work, I include a personal reflection. My piece, for example, has a female character who tends to overwork herself to the point of her body recoiling in exhaustion. Ito's is a comic, thus not really having all of it represent a deeper personal issue he had (at least not in a larger setting like mine).
Reflection:
My Silhouette Storytelling piece is a horror/gore take on the shapes I drew earlier on. We weren’t told what we’d be doing with these shapes when we were given 15 seconds to draw them. I turned it into an illustration that I call “Loosen Up”. It tells the story of a painter who refuses to take breaks from her own work, resulting unexpectedly in her own arm fighting back against herself; twisting into a spiral to restraint her from working any longer. I like working with horror/gore related topics, as artists who do so (for example, Junji Ito was a large inspiration for this piece) can make emotion really pop with their work. I tried to achieve that in my own take on the media. I experimented with the hand given materials I was able to use, and came out the best I good to capture the emotions and intensity that I wanted to visible notice in my final product. Working with tools, like ink black markers, that I was familiar with brought comfort to me as I worked while testing watercolor paints was on a whole other spectrum. However, after a while, I started to relax and get into it, and I found that very soothing in creating a piece so intense.
This piece was my first larger based project at Miad, and, with the time given in class and at my house for the week, I think I did a great job. I felt proud to finish something so unique at the end of only one week. Out of all the parts in my piece, I'd say that the turnout of the arm was one of my very bests. The use of thick and thin lines as the arm mangled itself around into a circle-like shape was pulled off exactly how I wanted to. My eyes keep following it. Surprising that the most horrific part in my piece was the most alluring part of it, at least for me, but that's, of course, what I wanted for my final product. If I could fix anything I'd probably redo the "initial" initial face of the female, as the turnout wasn't as I wanted to be, but my digital reboot seems to have it more my style so that is great. This was my first time using watercolor as well, and I quite liked the relaxing emotions it filled me with, so I'd actually be strongly interested in doing another fully watercolor piece in the future.
This piece was my first larger based project at Miad, and, with the time given in class and at my house for the week, I think I did a great job. I felt proud to finish something so unique at the end of only one week. Out of all the parts in my piece, I'd say that the turnout of the arm was one of my very bests. The use of thick and thin lines as the arm mangled itself around into a circle-like shape was pulled off exactly how I wanted to. My eyes keep following it. Surprising that the most horrific part in my piece was the most alluring part of it, at least for me, but that's, of course, what I wanted for my final product. If I could fix anything I'd probably redo the "initial" initial face of the female, as the turnout wasn't as I wanted to be, but my digital reboot seems to have it more my style so that is great. This was my first time using watercolor as well, and I quite liked the relaxing emotions it filled me with, so I'd actually be strongly interested in doing another fully watercolor piece in the future.
Connecting to the ACT:
1.) Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork:
Junji Ito's creative horror series "Uzumaki and his ability to turn everyday shapes and things that weren't usually scary into disturbing works of art was really important to me, and I wanted to do the same in my silhouette drawing intepretation.
2.) What is the overall approach ( point of view ) the author ( from your research ) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Simplicity and the unknown, unusual approach to horror, can make things all that more scary.
3.) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
Using such a simple story concept like an overworked artist painting her life away and disabling her from working in a more horrific manner is so much more interesting. Horror can really come in all ways.
4.) What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
Overworking yourself will do nothing but bad for your future; if it goes too far, you could put yourself into perminent damage.
5.) What kind of inferences ( conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning ) did you make while reading your research?
Horror can show in all shapes and forms. It's easy to turn anything into something terrifying.
Junji Ito's creative horror series "Uzumaki and his ability to turn everyday shapes and things that weren't usually scary into disturbing works of art was really important to me, and I wanted to do the same in my silhouette drawing intepretation.
2.) What is the overall approach ( point of view ) the author ( from your research ) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
Simplicity and the unknown, unusual approach to horror, can make things all that more scary.
3.) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
Using such a simple story concept like an overworked artist painting her life away and disabling her from working in a more horrific manner is so much more interesting. Horror can really come in all ways.
4.) What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
Overworking yourself will do nothing but bad for your future; if it goes too far, you could put yourself into perminent damage.
5.) What kind of inferences ( conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning ) did you make while reading your research?
Horror can show in all shapes and forms. It's easy to turn anything into something terrifying.
CITATIONS ( DONE IN MLA FORMAT )
Itō, Junji. Tomie: the Junji Ito Horror Comic Collection. ComicsOne Corp., 2001.
Itō, Junji, and Yuji Oniki. Uzumaki. VIZ Media, 2007.
“Junji Ito.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 July 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junji_Ito.
Itō, Junji, and Yuji Oniki. Uzumaki. VIZ Media, 2007.
“Junji Ito.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 July 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junji_Ito.