ATA: Train scene

After the first piece of collage translated so well across into photoshop, I made the decision to create more pieces and take them all across. 

The next piece I created was centred around the novel "colourless tsukuru tazaki and his years of pilgrimage" as the main character in that has a job of building stations but he also enjoys trains and spends a lot of his time visiting stations when he is down. 

One of the problems I first encountered was that I had created lots of textures in the mono print studio but didn't limit them to two colours. At first I tried to use just two colours from the mono print selection but it really limited the textures I could use in each piece so I opted to use all of the textures I liked despite the colour and then change the hue once I got into photoshop. 

I was really pleased with how it's started to come out, by adding a layer of blue hue it got all of the pieces to match whilst letting them retain their textures and each having a slightly different colour. 

After this I realised that the piece looked a little bit empty, I had managed to give the sense of depth but felt that by adding a character it would improve this but also it would lend itself to the feeing of isolation. 

I also experimented with different brushes but have not yet decided on whether I want a wet brush look or if I want the character to be more of an outline. Something that was mentioned in my crits was the inclusion of a darker tone to add more depth to each piece. I avoided adding it in for a while because I thought it might look too "busy" but eventually decided to add it in. Now I am just thinking about which character I want to place in.

LIKES 

• I really think the collage has translated well in photoshop 
• The textures work really well and it feels consistent with the other 

DISLIKES 

• I'm not sure if it is too busy or too much in comparison to "into the woods". 

IMPROVE

• Unsure about the depth of the piece, need to ask opinions on the character placement next time in crit. 
• Ask whether the inclusion of darker pieces makes it too busy? 

ATA: Creating the scenes

It was only after I had read three of his novels (after dark, Norwegian Wood and Colourless Tsaski)  that I decided on a theme to carry through into my finals. 

After reading them I knew that I wanted to create the same kind of isolation that Murakami creates in his works, so I knew I wanted to create work that where space and composition was considered. Time is a strong running theme throughout Murakami's work so that needed to come into that somehow. 

Discovering collage as a medium was a lucky accident really, I was stuck on how to manifest how I felt about Murakami's work and when I used some left over mono prints to create a new piece of work it communicated all the things I had hoped for. 

The distorted background and varying shapes allowed for me to display a distorted sense of reality and time which worked really nicely alongside a lone character on the page. 

I continued to create sketches from the scenes in the books that stood out to me and from them started to make compositions. 

ATA: Into The Woods

TURNING POINT 

The introduction of collage into my work has been the biggest turning point for me in this project, I have been stuck for weeks playing around with different mediums. I ended up reading three of Haruki Murakami's novels in the end before I really had a clear idea of how to visually present the work. 

INTO THE WOODS 

His work really made me feel a sense of isolation and disconnection from reality so that was something I wanted to bring into the work I was making. I was messing around with scraps left over from my mono print sessions and arranged something interesting on my page. I continued to make other work but kept looking at the piece I had made earlier and realised that the reason I kept coming back to it was because there was something visually interesting there and I should develop it further. This first piece is modelled on a scene in Norwegian Wood and so named "into the woods". 

I really dislike collage but as I played around with the composition I really enjoyed the sense of distortion it gave the work. I finished the collage but the problem with the original was that there wasn't just two colours in the print, but I loved the textures. This was something I brought up in a meeting with Ben who advised that I go to the mono print studio and produce lots of textures and colours and also that I take the existing piece into photoshop and convert it into two of the strongest colours so that it met the brief. 

I did this and then realised that I would have to make a decision whether to go landscape or portrait, after some consideration I chose landscape so it gave me more space to add textures in. 

After scanning it in to photoshop I realised that I would have to edit the original ( as it was made portrait) and this was the biggest problem I had with this piece. I duplicated the trees from the left hand side and took them to the right. It still wasn't sitting right on the page so then I embedded some tree like mono prints I had done in the workshop. I was pleased with it but it still felt like it was missing something. 

I left this piece along for a while so I could think on it as I created the others. I spoke again to Ben who encouraged me to keep the cats that had come from the mono print in my work. I began to collage the cats in the background of other pieces. The cats are representative of the women in Murakami's novels who were so mysterious but always present. 

LATER ON 

I came back to the piece after creating the others and decided to embed my favourite piece from screen print in the background and it worked far better than I had hoped. I could have easily left it out but I liked the screen print so much I felt it should be a part of the collage. 

I still think it works well within the piece and gives it that added extra mystery (as its not immediately noticeable) and I think out of them all this is my favourite piece (from the colour choice to the secret cat).