Persons of Note: Yuri Gagarin

For this brief I have to produce a series of illustrations in response to a person of note. The series must exist across a range of different formats whilst maintaining a visual consistency throughout. These include:

• 4 x stamps (5cm by 3cm)
• 4 x Postcards (10.5cm by 21cm)
• 1 x Poster (59.4cm x 42cm) 

For my person of note I decided on Yuri Gagarin who was the first man in outer space. He was known as a family man with a winning smile and toured the world after his trip to outer space, representing the successes of the Soviet Union and communist way. He had been picked from his competitor after years of training mainly due to his background; his parents lived on a communal farm and his story became one of hope and an example of how under communism anyone can succeed. His life soon turned down hill after affairs and he only went on one other space mission; in which he sadly died. This tragedy has a lot of speculation over it and his story goes from triumph to tragedy in a matter of years. However I want to focus on why he was a person of note; and this was not because of the latter years but because of his success as the first man to go to outer space and because of his triumphs in allowing the Soviet Union to be seen as a success and inspirational around the world. He had done something no other on earth had ever done; and he had done it before the USA!

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/sts1/gagarin_anniversary.html

Below are some of my research images to be used for reference in this project:

I researched deeply into his life and watched some documentaries about it which were extremely interesting. My main aspects I wish to focus on are of him being a family man, a handsome 'celebrity', an astronaut and as a product of the communist Soviet Union.

Below are some of my work from my sketchbook:

I really liked using collage however I decided to try using water colours as I wanted to use a particular colour scheme which may have been hard to find/achieve using collage given my time restraints. I decided to use the colour scheme of red and yellow as these represented the communist soviet party and this is extremely appropriate to incorporate into my work on Yuri Gagarin as he represented hope and the success of the party. He was used as an example; chosen as the first man to go into space due to his training and ability but also because of his background; a son of farmers from a communal farm. He showed how within a communist soviet society how everyone has an equal chance and anyone can be successful, to both the general soviet public and other nations. He toured the world representing his nation and its beliefs and was used as a promotional tool. He was also a family man (although by the downfall of his career his homelife broke down too with cheating allegations) during his success in space and presented this wholesome lifestyle during his fame afterwards. I have tried to present him in the prime of his career; portraying him as handsome (with a winning smile that 'lit up the cold war'), a family man, a communist/soviet, and an astronaut. He was a celebrity of his time.

Here are some of my pencil and water colour drawings exploring the above ideas:

I then decided to add a background using the layer tool on photoshop: 

I really liked the effect that having multiple layers created and how it enhanced the message of communism and the Soviet Union which is essential in this work. 

My final poster was created by using water colours and a few marks using felt tips. I wanted to portray the stars/space in the background whilst still using the colour scheme of red and yellow, and I also wanted to represent the Soviet Union with the communist symbol behind him to the right. I represented his successes in space using the medals and his charming smile to represent the successes of the Soviet Union and him as a family man as well as a heart throb.

Evaluations and Peer Crit:

After receiving this feedback and being able to look at other peoples work I scaled all my pieces to the correct size and then printed them out and worked on my blog further. Below is my final poster which I printed out at A2 using matt paper.

I think it would have been stronger and cleaner cut using digital but to represent the era and context I thought hand painted would be more appropriate. I think I could have made it more detailed however overall I think it works well and the colour scheme looks effective.

Studio Brief 3- A Day in the Life

Brief: 

Produce 3 illustrations that visually communicate my response to 'Evolution and Bad Boyfriends' text. They need to be produced using two colours plus stock to the following three formats:

200mm x 200mm
105mm x 200mm (portrait)
290mm x 105mm (landscape)

They should be distinct but work as a set or series and be visually consistent.

Supporting Material:

http://www.jeanjullien.com/

http://barryblitt.com/stuff/

http://keithnegley.com/
http://joshcochran.com/work

After reading my text I picked out some key topics/words, for which I found five reference images and used them to create some collages in my sketchbook. My choice of words were; controlling parents (for this I found a stern looking middle aged woman), peacocking (when a male shows off to attract potential mates, for this I found a peacock showing off his tail to a peahen), resources (for this I found an image of falling pound coins), gambling (for this I found an image of dice; it refers to the gamble in genetics and also the traits of a bad boyfriend- gambling his resources instead of using them to provide for their offspring) and babies (signifying the survival of genetics- for this I found an image of two babies- this also portrays the idea of siblings and the parents choice between them, it states in the article that 'by helping their needier daughters, parents maximized their total number of surviving grandchildren'). 

Some of my experimental sketchbook work;

This is a primary photograph I used as reference for the right hand page below.

Above are a few pages from my sketchbook experimenting with ideas and media following the article and concentrating on a few key elements. 

This was some of the work from one of Freds workshops. The intention of this was to explore ideas and themes:

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During a seminar with Fred we had to cut up 2 sheets of A1 paper into 34 rectangular strips of equal size. We then had to focus on one aspect of our project; I focused on the peacock and the desirable qualities it represents (as a bird- successful and desirable genetics suggesting strength and thus protection, as a man/boyfriend - success and thus useful resources/strength/protection). I replaced the 'eye' in the tail with a coin with the queens head on it. This signifies wealth and protection and success - just like the tail does for the peacock. This is relevant to my article as it represents the 'good boyfriend' this is the man with the resources; with the money and supplies to look after the woman and more importantly their children; the protection of their DNA. The 'grandparents' or 'overbearing parents' will not invest in this woman as she is already taken care of. 

The article looks at why, if both the woman and her parents both want the survival of their genes, their is conflict in mate choice. If the parents have more than one child, it is in their evolutionary interests to distribute their resources - money, support etc. The child, however, cares more about the survival of their genes than that of their siblings, so each child should try to secure more than his or her fair share of parental resources. In the article they talk about their computer model study in which they allowed a females parents to interfere with her choice of a male, and for parents to distribute their resources among their children. They found that parents invested more resources in daughters who chose mates with few resources because this daughter would profit more from extra help than her more fortunate sisters; and maximized their total number of surviving grandchildren. This unequal investment meant that daughters could 'exploit' this generosity; instead of holding out for the perfect man they could accept a less helpful partner whilst still ending up with a similar amount of support (from parents). As a result, the choosiness of females gradually declined over evolutionary time; simultaneously parental preference for caring sons-in-law increased.

Pages from my sketchbook: here I was thinking about the idea of parents having to put their resources (supplies and support) into their daughter with an unsupportive boyfriend. I drew this completely from my imagination and tried to use just two colours, pink and blue, however I did use different tones and shades of these two colours. I really like the effect of these two colours together as I think they compliment and contrast each other well; the warm and cool tones represent the good and bad relationships. I have depicted a scene of the unlucky in love daughter drowning without any air supplies or support from her boyfriend (instead he is swimming in the background), her parents have to use their own air supplies and support her in order for her and her unborn child, their genetics, to survive. Meanwhile, their other lucky in love daughter relaxes above water with as much air supplies she needs and is supported in a rubber ring by her boyfriend.

After having my one on one tutorial with Matt I decided to aim to create simpler images. Its natural for me to try to cram as much into one image as I can and I ended up (in the image above) condensing the whole meaning of the article into one frame. I thought I was on track with this and that I was responding to my brief, however Matt reminded me that the three images were just to complement the article and not to replace it. I then thought back to some of my earlier ideas and decided to continue with my peacock feather idea as this was one of my simpler ones. From the layout/frame exercise we did I knew how I wanted to arrange my feather on the page and decided to use it for the portrait piece because I think it looks like the strands are naturally flowing downwards and it leads the eye to the 'eye' of the tail. Here is an initial sketch for the tail: 

On the left is my peacock feather using monotone and replacing the 'eye' with a pound coin. On the right hand side is some faint pencil and biro sketches mapping out where I could have colour on my square design.
I decided on the colours pink and blue because of the fact that pink/red is often the colour of love or lust and dark blue to add some weight to the image and the meaning; the sad fact women are settling for less. I looked at using these colours for the peacock feather and I thought it worked well however after using it with my wedding toppers design I decided against it due to the wedding dress loosing relationship to its meaning as their was no white - it became less recognisable, this was true for the cake too. So I then decided to use black and white so that I could convey the images more clearly.

Beneath are some of my preliminary sketches for my final illustrations. I decided to use black pen as it conveyed the message at its most simplest and clearest form. I used two pens in differing thickness and concentrated on line to convey shadow and power.

Unfortunately I made a huge error when cutting the sizes and drawing the designs on; I cut one at the slightly wrong size and then confused that one with the wrong layout- so my portrait and landscape pieces are mixed round. I have learnt a huge lesson from this and it will be something I will definitely be checking again and again before finishing the illustration in future. If I were to do it again I would definitely ensure the correct sizes were used- this brief was really important in highlighting this issue. 

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