This is quite an exciting exercise that evolves around, drawing, illustration and collage, and creating a narrative as a result. It joins all the experiences and skills that I’ve been developing through the coursework, including previous units, where we learnt about the juxtaposition and skill of collaging. I should create an initial drawing of a dog or cat, and incorporate it into the collage for its further exploration. I think this exercise aims to teach us how to create continuousity from the transformation of the initial image.
I have some pets at my parent’s house: two dogs, Jack Russel and a mini Yorkie, and we have a cat in my house, a tabby cat Howard. Thinking in advance, I started picking up some characteristics of our animals, and how their features can potentially evolve into the narrative. I assume it is all about imagination, and the creative process will lead me to some exciting outcomes.
I had some photographs of our cat Howard, I decided to go with the drawing of the cat by the way, because their personality is quite versatile, they can be shy, cheaky, confident and timid, all in one pet.
I did a mind map with a sketch of Howard and describing his charachteristic, the way he looks and his personality.
I made a sketch of Howard from the picture where he sat on a kitchen chair. He looks there relaxed and confident, but still keeps his cuteness. I used only a portrait of him, rather than depicting the whole body.
After I did a line drawing of the sketch, using only five lines. That’s basically his personality how I see this cat when he is in a funny, or playful mood. Also, he has slightly buzzed eyes, so I used the opportunity to draw them too. I had a little laugh by doing these drawings, as they sum up this cat very well.
As this exercise evolves around the mastering of collaging and juxtaposition, I went for some inspiration from my books for collages I have from the first unit for core concepts. This is the area that I particularly enjoyed. The beauty is that you can create the narrative by doing the collage from the flow. From my observation, the narrative of a collage can change dramatically because of the materials and colours that are being used. The purpose of distortion is to create the feeling of the design during the creative process. I loved that kind of experiment, but the tricky part of it is that it can catch the designer with some unusual outcomes, as it is difficult to plan in advance.
Bellow I saved some designs from the book The Age of Collage Vol. 2. By bringing together disparate images and objects, collage transcends boundaries between artistic disciplines. Traditional analogue technology has its roots in surrealism and Dadaism. Collage like any other type of art doesn’t have limits and in some cases boundaries.
After some research, I proceeded to the collage version of the cat. I chose the simple drawing line I thought best represented the cat’s personality. I had some cuts from Economist magazines that my stepdad has a subscription to, also, I created lots of cuts from the photography magazines. In addition, I used some little parts from the brochure with text and some photos of nature, like flowers and grass. I cut different shapes cuts, depending on the area I was going to use on the cat’s face. I was going with a flow, and after filling most of the gaps the face started to re-appear in a new version. I looked at the collage and thought that this cat reminded me of a personality or character from the early 1920s, that this cat is slim, wearing a suit and a bow tie, has some manners, and also loves attention.
I was looking at this collage, and my husband asked me to describe what I saw, which helped me to visualise the idea I could evolve around that collage that I created. We came up with the idea that it could be the Great Gatsby cat, that’s iconic personality, that I could build a narrative around.
While looking through the cat collage, I began the next part of the design, creating the drawing. Following the general lines, I combined the personality of our cat Howard with Gatsby. What’s remarkable is that I created the cat’s bangs, which matched Jay Gatsby’s hairstyle, I think there was even a kind of mannerism that overlapped here as well.
I thought about which part of the film I would like to display in this story. The film has so many ideas I could get inspiration from, especially the love story Jay Gatsby had with the love of his life Daisy. I was going to depict that, but then I thought his facial expression was too serious for the love affair around him. Therefore I decided to present Gatsby the cat, proudly sitting on a chair with his cane. There is a celebration going on around, a birthday cake and decorations, but the character is sitting all in his thoughts, being distant from everything that is happening.
The Great Catsby
That’s the name of the illustration I came up with in the result, The Great Catsby. As I was using watercoloured pencils. I brightened up the illustration in Photoshop, adding additional sketches and contrast. I definitely can say that was quite a fascinating transformation to witness, how the sketch of the animal, combined with juxtaposition and collage can lead to personality creation. I was surprised to see the outcome, and what imagination can bring if you just simply follow the creative process without planning much ahead. That’s useful knowledge, that I was personally happy to discover.
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