Final Visual Concept

Finally, I have managed to create what was on my mind for the last couple of months. My research presented in my blog posts over these past weeks represented Transformation. I conducted my research on the 3 areas: Art, Design and Film which eventually helped me in the process of generating ideas and designing a concept which works for the same 3 areas.

My last four blog posts show a constant development of the concept. Three of which refer to the three areas and the concept. Fundamentally, the idea was to transform the painting ‘The Girl before a mirror’, but transformation can also be seen through the painting considering the aim behind the concept.

Final Concept

I used number of the sketches which I uploaded earlier to help me formulate the concept. As an inspiration, I used various paintings by Picasso and Cezanne` to portray the same technique used in their paintings. Considering that these artists used to work with oils, as an alternative I have decided to cooperate with acrylics.

The figure on the left represents Post-Impressionism; I applied the same technique Cezanne` used in most of his figurative work.  He is wearing the British Military Jacket which was worn by the soldiers during the film ‘The Four Feathers’ complimented with a light coloured trousers.

The mirror, in itself presents the image of transformation of the figure on the left. For the reflected figure I used Cubism as an inspiration. His face was surely influenced from the face used in Picasso’s painting, ‘The girl before a mirror’.  As for the rest of his body, I combined some of the sketches presented.

I filled the background with newspaper cuttings to create a collage; afterwards I spilled some coffee to give it a classic look. As text, I applied the different typographies which I mentioned before to the words related to the theme.

Concept [Design] Development

As I have mentioned before, I've decided to create a collage for the background. This idea was inspired from the Synthetic part of Cubism, when collages were founded. Therefore the background will represent the design category. The words placed in the background in a random manner should be related to the concept such as; Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne`, Cubism and so on. As for typography I’m aiming to use different typefaces used in art posters over the years.

Behrens, International Exposition St. Louis,
1904

The German architect, graphic designer and typographer, Peter Behrens (1868-1940) was certainly one of the greatest designers and left a great influence on such fields. He contributed to the transition from Art Nouveau to the Bauhaus. I will use his roman typeface Behrens Antiqua (1907-1909) and also Behrens Schrift which is a simplified black lettering typeface with a geometric impression. The typography applied to the ‘International Exposition St.Louis 1904’ is another typeface which I will put to use.

Beggarstaff Brothers, Rowntree's Elect Cocoa,
1896

The Beggarstaff Brothers (1894-99) produced a variety of simple posters which reformed Europe, having a bare background along with bold colours and a silhouette figure. I will use one of their hand-cut san-serif typefaces which ignored the style of the time being (Art Nouveau).

Marinetti, the founder of the Italian Futurist group, gave a concept to the new typography in the book ‘Les Mots en Liberte` Futurists’. It features numerous compositions using different typefaces with various sizes and styles. I intend to use these hand-drawn designs and hand-writings in my final concept.   

Marinetti, Les Mots en Liberte` Futuristes, 1919 

Down here, I've uploaded a sketch(Image 1) of the background made out of newspaper cuttings and the other one(Image 2) includes three different fonts taken from the posters I've brought up in this post.

Image 1

Image 2

References :-

MyFonts Inc, 1999. Behrens Schrift .[online] 

Available at: <http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/solotype/behrens-schrift/> [Accessed on 9 January 2013].

Beggarstaffs, 2008. Biography. [online]

Available at: <http://beggarstaffs.com/biography/> [Accessed on 9 January 2013].

The Trustees of Princeton University, 2011. Peter Behrens' book design. [online]

 Available at: <http://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2010/09/peter_behrens_book_design.html> [Accessed on 9 January 2013].

Concept [Film] Development

Image 1

The film ‘The four feathers’ mainly focuses on the British Army, and the colour red is dominant throughout most of the scenes in this film. Overall we can at least see that not all of the British soldiers are heartless killers, but some of them own a great heart to match their red jackets.  In a scene at the Sudan Harry is given a red British army jacket, and considering the motif and the film, I've selected the dressing props used throughout the film and will use them in my painting. The Red Coat or the British Military jacket used in the film can be seen worn on the soldiers at all times during their duties. It would be very appropriate to use the same Military jacket and dress both figures in the painting in it.

Image 2

The British Military jacket (Image 1) used in the film ‘The Four Feathers’ has an early 20^th century style. The red jacket which I’m utilizing has navy blue collar and cuff lings, fastened with 5 brass buttons. It has two shirt pockets, one on each side and also fastened with a brass button. On the other drawing (Image 2), I've placed an interpretation of the same jacket, but in the cubist style and I've adjusted the colours. I used blocks of orange and white for the jacket, while the collar has two black metal buttons. For the bottoms I used yellow ochre, white and a creamy colour. Nevertheless, I didn't like the design of the jacket in this sketch, it looks huge and without any kind of shape or form. Thus I will do further sketching to design a better one.

Concept [Art] - Development

'Girl before a mirror' is the painting which I will make use of for my final concept. through such painting I will show the transformation from Post-Impressionism to Cubism.

Image 1

Applying bold colours, thick black outlines, geometric shapes and interlocking planes to the painting will definitely leave a Cubist touch. I started sketching different figures which I can make use of for my final concept. I drew various figures in the Cubist style. The first (Image 1) and second (Image 2) images show the same design, but in the second image(Image 2) I've decided to diminish the legs so that the figure looks taller. The design of this jacket goes very well with the British Military jacket used in ‘The Four Feathers’.

Image 2

In my last sketch(Image 3), I designed another jacket with a different bottom, and on the right of the sketch I included two other bottoms. The upper one has curvy trousers with long pointed shoes, whilst the one under it, has one thin and one fat leg. Although I’m not sure which ones I will use I think they will both help me a lot for this concept.

Image 3

In the Post-impressionist era, artists used to paint figures and portraits using debs of colour to give an emotional response, which initially led to Expressionism and secondly to Cubism. The figure representing Post-Impressionism can be associated to one of Paul Cezanne’s drawings considering that I will use his technique as a reference to this period. The figures are simple and will not include a lot of detail as to follow Cezanne’s work in this period (Image 4).

Image 4

Concept [Transforming 'Girl before a mirror' ]

I've already mentioned 2 different ideas for my final concept in the previous blogs, which both refer to all three categories; art, design and film. I combined my initial ideas and managed to interpret most of them through one concept.  Since the subject matter is Transformation, through the form of a painting I will represent the transformation from the Post-Impressionist era to the Cubist period.

 Picasso, Girl before a mirror, 1932

I will create a different interpretation of Picasso’s painting ‘Girl before a mirror’ (1932). The two figures shown will represent Post-Impressionism and Cubism. Since Picasso was inspired from Cezanne, the figure on the left should be in a Post-Impressionist style, while the other figure reflected in the mirror should be in the Cubist style, therefore the same figure is represented in two different styles.

The film ‘The Four Feathers’ took the colour red to symbolize various actions and occurrences through the film. All of the British Army was dressed in red. I will definitely give a great dominance to this colour in my painting.

As a background, I have decided to use Picasso’s motif in the Synthetic part of Cubism, where he places actual images related to the theme on the painting. I've decided to have the background full of newspaper cuttings placed in a random manner with words related to this concept such as; Paul Cezanne, Cubism, Pablo Picasso and The Four Feathers.

A sketch of my final concept 

References:-

Picasso, 1932. Girl before a mirror. [image online]

Available at: <http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=78311>  [accessed on  12 December 2012].