Fifty shades and eroticisim

I have read the fifty shades of grey trilogy, when they first came out these three books took the world by storm, so I had to see what the fuss was about. However when the brief was given, I went back to the first of the three books and re-read it, to give my self an idea of the direction I wanted to go in.

I have done research in ways I didn't believe I ever would, I looked at Bondage porn, to give me an idea of what goes in Mr Greys 'play room' and to see how the human body looks in detail when two people are writhing around naked. I have also looked at artists, who focus more on the human body than eroticism, such as Raphael, and Leonardo Da Vinci as they produced accurate sketches of both the naked male and female human figure and that is something I will be looking at a lot during this project.

My initial idea for Fifty shades of Grey was to take away the basics of illustrated characters, such as the faces, as I remember when the media first released news of the novels being transferred to cinema and women went crazy, wondering who would play Mr. Grey. Every woman who had enjoyed reading the book had their own idea of what their own Mr. Grey would be like, and the people who where waiting for the film got into disputes as to who would play his part, some wanted Charlie Hunnam, famous for his role as Jackson Teller in Sons of Anarchy and others wanted Jamie Dorman, who eventually secured the role to play Mr.Grey. Now that Mr. Grey has a face, a lot of people I have spoken too, personally after seeing the film felt let down by Mr. Grey as he is not all they imagined. Now that the film has been released, the book's cover has been reinvented with a photo of Jamie Dorman holding Dakota Johnson (Anastasia Steele) up against a wall, taking away the beloved mystery of Mr. Grey away from fans and first time readers. I want to reinvent that mystery, by taking away the characters face, and focus on the hands, giving readers the chance to imagine Mr.Grey as they see fit all over again, as this erotic novel does wonders for a ladies imagination.
Hands are a very sexual part of the body, as well a very dangerous part as we use them every single day for simple tasks, for example a brick layers hands will be rough in comparison to a beauticians who moisturizes every single day, this gives us an idea of what gender a person is, just by their hands if we can't see their face. We can use our hands to hold our lovers, caressing them during the throws of intimacy or use our hands to inflict hurt and pain with a punch or slap, or they can instigate the use of a weapon such as a gun (via pulling the trigger). This is why hands will play the most important role in my illustrations.

 (The image too the right is a sketch by Leonardo Da Vinci, and the image to the left does not belong to me)

As well as focusing most of my interest on hands, I will be looking at the human body, but not too the point that my work becomes solely pornographic. To fit the book, which is very strong pornographic literature (A study found that women are sexually stimulated more so by literature and words than watching porn), I will have to have some explicit scenes, but I do want to tackle this project from a classier angle. Time to experiment.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Fifty shades of grey has caused a stir worldwide, creating mass havoc in book stores, as one of the first best selling raunchy novels, strictly focused on some BDSM fairy tale about a multi-millionaire Mr.Christian Grey and an innocent university graduate Miss. Anastasia Steele.

For our new brief we where given a list of books to illustrate, and I often choosing children's books over adult was magnetized to the likes of J.R Tolkien's 'The Hobbit', Roald Dahls, James and the Giant Peach and other childrens classics on the book list. Then it occurred to me, I'll challenge my self and push my boundaries, as it is my first year at University, so I have time to make mistakes and experiment, I looked at a lot of childrens books while illustrating at A Level, so I choose the most infamous book on the list.  E.L James 'Fifty Shades of Grey', if this brief goes to plan and I can succeed it will prove I could develop into a capable illustrator, being able to turn my hand (or paint brush) to anything, rather than just being a one trick pony. Having gone from one extreme to the other, as I'm used to illustrating Animals in clothing, but now I'll be painting hard core BDSM scenes from this 'fifty shades of f*cked up' love story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQERFnGvi_A

Above is the trailer to movie, if you don't know too much about the book, that will give you an idea of the story line. I will be staying away from the movie as much as possible, as it is easy to give illustrated characters a look of the actors from the movie.

I will be documenting my research as I go.

P.S This has been a draft since i received the brief 13 weeks ago!

My Big Book of Drawings

As our final project we had to create a big book of drawings, something that related to our previous briefs, showing our skills and upon a subject from our earlier projects that stand out the most to us.

In college for my final A Level project, I studied paleontology and archeology, as animals are my favorite thing to draw, but the history and science behind it really intrigued me, so after studying animals and mythological creatures at University, I decided my big book of drawings would not only be a project fitting to the final brief but a personal one. I chose big cats, and on the first page compared the anatomy of a skull belonging to a modern day big cat to their glacial period (Ice age) counterpart, the cat known as Smilodon Fatalis (Saber toothed Tiger) that walked the deserts and marsh land of California from 1.6 Million to 10,000 years ago. After this page, I moved on to how different the breeds of certain big cats are, yet all belonging to the family; Felidae, I studied the African Lion, Bengal Tiger, Cheetah, the Jaguar and Sunda Clouded Leopard. With not being able to provide a narrative, or extensive facts about each big cat I jotted down only their Latin Names, which all connects them to what I previously mentioned; The family Felidae.


I looked at how to bind books, choosing only to look at old books only because the start of my topic is over a million years old, I wanted my book to have a worn and aged feel to it. Old books where traditionally stitched together and as you can see my well read copy of 20,000 leagues under the sea is almost thread bare. I searched my grandfathers book shelf for vintage books with this method of binding, and on each the spine was loose. I don't know if this is from age or that the method isn't a very good one so I moved on with my search.



Here's some search results of mine from book binding research.
http://www.wikihow.com/Bind-a-Book

http://lifehacker.com/5867554/how-to-make-print-and-bind-your-own-books

http://www.marthastewart.com/270344/how-to-bind-a-book

In the end I decided to go it alone, and see what I could come up with...

  To create my book, I chopped up an old cardboard box, folding it into a book shape, and painted the inside a burnt umber, needing 2 to 3 coats of paint so it didn't look like a lazy job, yet sadly the paint didn't take as nicely to the card board as I was hoping.




I punched holes in the spine of my 'book' with screws, threading the wool I would use to hold my pages in place through them, and gluing them to the outer side of the book, where no one would see them, as by now my idea had changed as to how I wanted my book to look and that was wild, just like the animals I was studying. So to cover the wool thread, I bound my book in this very stylish Leopard print fabric, using white craft glue.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     I had already drawn out the images, for the inside of my book, on seperate pages, leaving opposite sides blank, so I could glue them together without defacing my work. I ripped the edges of the work, not caring for little tares in the paper as my book is wild. Finally I scored rough holes in the sides of my drawings, threading the wool through and creating a knot above the first page, so everything was secure. Nothing is tidy about my book, no clean cuts and I am happy with the outcome because I think my book gives off a free feeling, the color scheme is very natural, with only small hints of bright colors. I chose not to stick one medium, just as the natural world has not chosen to stick to one thread of DNA and has stitched an absolutely beautiful history and diversity of species and breeds.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Reportage

Reportage is a technique, or style of drawing that documents things that you have observed or researched, even if it isn't a major event.


Rob Conway
Sadly much can't be found about Rob, but his artwork is a brilliant example of reportage through everyday life.

The above sketch was done in Barcelona, I'm guessing on Copacabana beach, most likely a bunch of holiday goers and locals enjoying the weather.

A pair of Old and Putrid's doing their shopping

And some dude from Formula one

 I really enjoy the quickness of his work, it seems free, as if he has held the pencil or paintbrush very loosely and let it's do its own thing, but with the finer details, like the old ladies face shows some real traditional artistic skill. Also the diversity of colour and lack of within his work makes it more interesting.

My Dachshund Nora

For my reportage artwork, I used Ink, it seems to have a mind of its own, just moving by itself, running away from the line work its supposed to settling on.

A girl, looking rather sad, so I added in the blue ink to try and portray this.

Again, practicing with inks, with my perfume and lipstick, I like how the colours have met and suddenly clashed.

Alberto Seveso

Alberto Seveso is an Italian Graphic Designer (now working freelance in Bristol), growing up on Sardinia Island, first being introduced to art in the early 90's. He has mentioned that skate decks and the cover of music albums being his inspiration.

Alberto works purely in digital, photographing a model, and then proceeding to exaggerate their skintones and facial structures, as well as other body parts, in Adobe's Photoshop.

His work reminds me of tattoos and a bad makeup job but it works, as it looks like loads of butterflies are taking wing from someone they've had a little rest on.

Agencies

Agencies, they represent the illustrators, if you are a freelance style, the agency promotes your unique style, however if you work for the agency and are not sponsored by them, you work within their house style.

How do you see yourself?
Working as a freelance illustrator.

How do you want to be represented?
I want to be represented by an Agency, as a freelance illustrator, in bright bold colours so it gains the attention of perspective clients.


Here are some agencies

http://www.centralillustration.com/

http://www.folioart.co.uk/

http://www.lemonadeillustration.com/

The Consumer

The Consumers are the people who enjoy, and use the services of the final product. These are the people that the product is aimed at, a target market.

The product is created with a certain audience in mind, and with modern technology, there are so many ways to advertise this product. Youtube now allows companies to advertise their products before a video, or surveys. The advertisement in question depends what your recent search history is, for example, my favorite TV show is Sons of Anarchy, so youtube showed me a video of the fan merchandise (biker jackets and cuts) for sale on Amazon, and Facebook works in a similar way, if you have the app- Messenger, and mention for instance, you are thinking of purchasing an Ipad, the adverts at the side of your news feed will quickly change to different legitimate websites selling Ipads, because you are a potential consumer of this product. Yes this may seem like Facebook is violating your personal space and privacy, but this is how far advertisement has stretched, it is no longer bound to the TV, Radio or billboards.
Of course, there is such a thing as a bad advert, that doesn't appeal to the consumer at all.


The consumer has to enjoy the product, as it was designed by them in mind.
With children's books, there is a factory working to go through- Author- Illustrator- Agent- Publisher- Consumer.
Obviously children's books are aimed at small boys and girls, but they have to appeal to parents, as these are the people who decide what is and isn't suitable for their children to read.

Would you let your child read this?                                          Or this?

Or even this? (though it is a sattire of the hungry caterpillar,and probably only created by the very talented 'Eric Bastard' for the purpose of entertaining those who spend hours travelling the internet.)



Of course not, it's wildly inappropriate and unsuitable for children, and this is why we have consumers, a specific group of people at the end of the production line, ready to try and test our product,because not everything works for everyone.