· Cheese
· Eclipse
· The Hay Fever Dream
· Midwinter
Here a brief Run-Down of the Poems...
“Cheese” was a poem about how, if the earth were made of cheese, humankind would simply eat it until we were just fat little balls floating in space; clearly a metaphor for our plundering of the earth’s resources.
“Eclipse” was an account of the 1999 lunar eclipse where the sun and moon are personified, and the eclipse itself is made out to be an unsuccessful lover’s rendezvous.
Both of these poems were space themed which appealed to my imagination and I felt i could really make some strong images based around these themes.
“The Hay Fever Dream” was a humorous poem about a woman who hates her nose because of how much it causes her to suffer with hay fever but then becomes a poster girl for hay fever remedies and makes a fortune. The poem ends with her retiring on a yacht.
“Midwinter” was a romantic poem about hibernating indoors with you lover when its too cold and harsh to venture outside.
I found Tadanori Yoko very inspiring while working on this project...
He is a Japanese graphic artist whose career was in full swing in the 1970s. Although I have enjoyed his full colour posters, I found his “Genka Illustrations” most useful for this project: a non literal representation of a novel. Find out all about the surreal fun here:
http://pinktentacle.com/2009/09/genka-illustrations-by-tadanori-yokoo/
Here are a few of my favourite examples of his work:
Although this book is meant to appeal to Joyce’s family, particularly her grandchildren, so I had to remember not to include too much psychedelia in my designs, and definitely no nipples.
I also found the work of Matt Relkin useful inspiration for these images, I like the contrast of eerie space textures and harsh, block-colour shapes....
I also really enjoyed looking at the work of Eric Nyfeler, who creates posters with these beautiful screen-print textures...
Having developed my images to a point where I knew what I was drawing but not how the final pieces should look, I used Photoshop to create a rustic, printed effect. I chose to use digital techniques over traditional in this case because of the short amount of time I now had left on this project.
I scanned in my simple Tadanoori Yokoo inspired drawings (example above) and filled them in using Matt Relkin inspired block colours (example below).
I then used rollers and ink, as well as splattered ink and my collection of old books to create a range of textures, I scanned them in to lay over my images; hopefully giving them a similar quality to the gorgeous Eric Nyfeller screen prints. The results were pleasing and creating my final images digitally was also appropriate for a book which was going to be digitally reproduced in full colour. However, it has inspired me to create the real-deal print-wise in later projects.
The space based illustrations: “Cheese” and “Eclipse”, work well together, whereas “The Hay Fever Dream”, although it is a successful image, does not appear to be part of this set. “Midwinter" does not appear to fit as part of this series either.
Because this poetry book was designed to be such an eclectic mix it did not matter that not all my illustrations looked like they belonged together. However, it is something I have born in mind in later projects where a string illustrative identity was essential. (See my “The Outsider” project – a series of images which clearly all belong together)
The space themed images have inspired more illustration ideas. I am now working on a possible series of screen prints for FMP called “Celestial Bodies” .
