Turning the minds eye

Having the text I was given for this project, I really enjoyed the story of the heroine and the snake. To me this story represented bravery and adventure based around China and I was glad to have had the opportunity to explore this style of creating art because I’m very fond of books and reading, so being able to come out with something out of a simple text was very refreshing.

The first step was to of course analyse and re read the text a few times to grasp all of its context and to make sure I hadn’t missed any major details. During this process I was also aware of certain questions I asked myself such as: Who are the main characters? Are there any significant mentions of the atmosphere and descriptions of the environment the story takes place in? etc.

This then allowed me to experiment with a range of colours which I thought suited best such as greens and dark purples to reds to convey an outstanding atmosphere of the snake because it was being portrayed as  the villain and as the most captivating creature. I managed to experiment with diverse drawing styles such as : abstract, detailed realistic approach and more loose strokes with graphite sticks and pencils. I then proceeded to scan my drawings into a photocopier and printed them out using the different inks the copier had as well as going back and rescanning the same pictures in twice to achieve a layered effect shown below.

I really liked how the sketches came out of this experiment as they remind me of the printing process we had done in previous projects but also the sketches in different colours merging on top of one another give a distressed feel. If I were to explore this further I would have definitely tried to incorporate more of some of the other subject featured in the text, such as the heroine who kills the snake and the environment of the mountain described in the story.