references – lesley's headspace

Family trees image dump

So I sort of finished my Hades map (see below) and I’m working on the Castor and Pollux family tree. This is lite production at the moment and I’m still working on page design (book size is sort of settled?).

Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 10.54.51 am

Here are the family tree maps that I really like, to serve as references for how I’m going to draw. I might make some changes to the Hades map (i.e. add more background elements?) but basically this is the kind of look I want to achieve for the Pollux segment of the book.

family-tree-template-vintage-1891 il_340x270.411691933_iqzr il_fullxfull.313173195 vgosn_family_record_free_printable_vintage_image_family_tree_2_thumb type-tree-5

I’m going to use this to work on the family tree but I may wait until after tomorrow’s class so that I can get some insight and opinions from everyone. In the meantime, I’ll be doing more page layouts and I’ll start on my anatomical illustrations.

Illustration by Benze + Setup

I’ve been feeling a bit stale in the drawing department lately (although this has been a really good break for me), so I started browsing my favourite art websites to look for new inspiration. I am still bent on black and white illustration as much as I ever was, and today I discovered Benze‘s work, which is another aspect I’d like to incorporate into my melting pot of influences.

My plan for the setup is to have the book surrounded by my illustrations/ephemera created that relates to the book. This is just a spontaneous idea for now, but I’ve always been inspired by past work that creates an illustrated space. I’m not sure if it’ll be counterintuitive for the space to overwhelm the book, but I want to immerse the viewer in my aesthetic and I can draw pretty fast when I need to, so I really want to push myself.

I’m hoping to have this kind of space. Right now the plan is to have the left wall focus on fact and the right wall on fiction. So, the left wall would be newspaper clippings (all made by me) and anatomical drawings in a large, pleasing collage. The right wall would be more surreal drawings, possibly excerpts from Pollux’s narrative voice in the book, stuff that’s more esoteric (like my tarot cards). The back wall will be where I can illustrate most, a giant detailed piece about Gemini. And of course, the display stand will be where I place my book (hardcover with gold foil, hur).

This is just a fleeting thought at the moment, but I want a space that creates immersion in my theme and aesthetic so that people who don’t get to see the book at the show can still understand my thesis just from the way the space is arranged. I had a show in JC where I also did a book, and not everyone was able to see it because a book is by definition an intimate viewing that’s most conducive for one person at a time. So, I want to make the space at large evidence of my research, work and illustration skills as well.

Grimoire illustrations

I really, really did not want to comb through the PDF of The Munich Manual of Demonic Magic that I found online (the pages looked… used, as if someone actually used the grimoire for nefarious purposes) and decided to look for illustrations instead corresponding to the kind of grotesque/strange aesthetic I’ve been trying to achieve over the past weeks. I got a bit too creeped out knowing that some (obviously foolish and mad) individuals have tried using the Munich Manual to summon demons that they (obviously) can’t control. I actually have a book on my shelf teaching you to summon demons and cautioning you not to do it. I keep it as a novelty item.

Weird magic superstitions aside, most of these images seem to come from the Dictionnaire Infernal. They are all representations of the demons in the hierarchy that corresponds to Roman Catholic theology, and some of them have made their way into popular culture today and have been adapted into graphic novel characters (Mike Carey’s Lucifer and the new series The Wicked + The Divine).

I’m referring to these not because I have some latent interest in becoming a demonologist (I’m a wimp, I don’t even want to play horror video games…) but because I’m still struggling with the notion of the grotesque. I may have a strong stomach for stuff like ero guro but that thing with multiple legs is quite honestly creepy.

StrangeRemains.com is a gold mine of wonderful references

“Visitors were confronted with the skeletons of a child of four with a toy in its hands, a five-year-old holding a silk thread with an embalmed heart dangling from it, and a girl drying her eyes with a pocket handkerchief. Decorations, memento mori images and vanitas symbols put the horror of death in perspective by stressing the transience of life, by showing that the body was no more than an earthly frame for the soul. After death it no longer served its purpose – only an anatomist could still make it useful to the living.”

http://strangeremains.com/2015/06/14/turning-corpses-into-art-the-rembrandts-of-anatomical-preparation/

These are wonderful, wonderful images that embody the kind of feel I’m looking at. Something useful Astrid said in class the other day – my project could go for “an 1800s feel with a consciousness of contemporary work”.

David Macaulay illustrations

Things for me to take note from David Macaulay’s illustrations – play with perspectives (I use a lot of straight-on views which are suitable for anatomical drawings) and angles.

The Brothers Quay

Today I discovered the Brothers Quay in class and I think this is going to be incredibly good visual/atmospheric reference for the kind of vibe I’d possibly like to go for with my work. I watched this entire excerpt from The Street Of Crocodiles and I couldn’t help but find it very enchanting and disturbing at the same time. Apparently their work is less about meaning and more about atmosphere and experience, which is an interesting take on approaching an immersive project.

Justin Hopkins/ RareBit

This was what I was trying to do with my blue and red dotwork that I tried a while back and gave up on. I might try again. These images are by Justin Hopkins, from here.

Les Yeux du Chat by Moebius and Jodorowsky

Le Yeux du Chat by Moebius and Jodorowsky is one of my favourite short masterpieces ever. I’m sorely envious of this stellar example of wordless storytelling and I’m dying to bring my own illustrative style up to this kind of standard.

I’m thinking that storytelling will work for me. The bizarre works for me. And perhaps I could also try using monochromatic washes of colour? This is still my very early exploration so I haven’t exactly gone into specifics about what I want to do yet.

I got all the images off this original post.

Erika Tay’s illustrations

Erika Tay (erikartoon.tumblr.com) is a Singaporean illustrator I discovered on Instagram. I love the tension between the grotesque and colourful in her work, which is always what I go for in my own work (except not the exact same style because I want to be able to carve myself a niche without copying other illustrators I like). Just visual inspiration for myself.

The Resurrectionist by EB Hudspeth

I got my hands on a copy of The Resurrectionist by EB Hudspeth recently and this book exemplifies something of the direction I’d like to move in with regard to my FYP. The book incorporates the fictional biography of a mad scientist of sorts alongside the (also fictional) scientist’s codex into this wonderfully dark tome that makes you want to believe in the existence of the implausible creatures it presents.

The anatomical drawings are so inspiring and again there’s that tension between reality and fantasy (which to me is also an aspect of duality) which is what I’d like to incorporate in my storytelling in my project as well.

So far, I’ve only got a couple of things down: storytelling (stories within stories, blurring of reality and fantasy, mythology, bizarre anatomy/body horror.