Pointless posters

This week the third year illustration students held a exhibition through the soul cellar (bar/restaurant) and graphic design company Johnny Toaster. The idea was to create a 'pointless'  image that we could exhibit as a whole year in a space that would contribute to fund raising for a London degree show on brick lane.

I chose to stay close to my own final project, deciding that I am the type of person that would let my work slide if I concentrated on another different subject. I wanted to do something quite simple that would look good aesthetically for the poster, but could also be used as an image for my project. I had the idea of using Virginia Woolfs side profile referencing from a prolific image of her aged 17, it was something that I kept going back to and I felt that as it was the only strong image that came to mind I would just go with it, finding that sometimes a image that only has a quick thought process behind it, can be successful and not look 'hashed' together in a last minute desperate attempt. And the brief was 'pointless'.

I printed off the image after tweaking the levels of exposure on photoshop and set about getting the initial shape of her face and profile, Ihad a rough idea of what I wanted the image to look like. As it was a floating image because of the first print off I decided to make her shoulders island shaped thinking of the isle of Skye where the lighthouse she was influenced from. I at last included a tiny lighthouse which is only visible after a while on the image, it looks like it could be a pin badge or button on her dress/island/shoulder. 

When the idea of the pointless posters was set, it was decided that the 3rd year students would have to use the same grey paper, and had a choice of four colours: CMKY (blue, pink, yellow, black).
I chose Cyan blue, I felt that it would tie the image together, enforcing the nautical feel to the image. The colour blue is often used to describe a person that is feeling down or depressed, I felt this fit in - Woolf suffered from depression most of her adult life. The placement also bears close to the isolation of the island in the novel to the lighthouse, the lighthouse symbolises sadness in the book. I felt that making the image to look like an island wold enforce the feeling of ominous sadness. 

Before I chose the final image, I used the side profile of the original image to make a paper cut college. I used left over wallpaper from my room that has roses printed over it and collaged the image of a lighthouse behind it. I liked this image a lot, I felt it spoke of unsaid messages of loneliness without being obvious, the wallpaper background shows a feminine profile with bleak and dark imagery of the lone lighthouse. Virginia Woolf wrote to the lighthouse and was said to have based the characters on her family members such as her parents. One thing that triggered an early bout of depression for her was the death of her mother when she was only 13. When the character mrs Ramsey passes away, the book goes through a somber period reflecting the loss of a mother and wife, in a way Woolf to me was always carrying around the weight of a lonely lighthouse in her head. 

This image, however much I liked it simply wouldn't have looked right as a screen print, part of its charm was the rough layers that you could make out, putting it onto a screen and flattening the image would have ruined it, so instead I chose the line drawing of woolfs profile. After I had screen printed it I realised that I had made the right decision, the composition and style of the drawing worked well with the materials given on the brief.